Saul's Cross Country Ski Base Repair and Restoration

Saul's Cross Country Ski Base Repair and Restoration
How to Repair and Restore Cross Country Ski Bases, including how to fix gouges and scratches, restructuring, base sanding and more. Adapted from Velotique's advanced waxing clinic part 2. velotique.com

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Closed Caption:

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so let's start with a little bit a wax
remover
I'll
let it soak in for moment and hot
it's doing that get herself some
waiting paper and we'll just
clean that stuff of an
remove what little waxer is actually on
the search so the skis
it's actually not a lot of blacks left
in the skis as they said they look like
they've been
badly neglected and they need
them little bit of care
summer he may be worried about the
sending process
because it's going to change the quality
of the surface at the skis
and effectively Ruffin it up well
remember we don't want the bases with
skis to be
to salute because if it's to salute it's
going to create section in the snow
so we want to restore the original stone
ground
texture in the bay said the skis by
using the sandpaper
and if we use to through the thin paper
the basis they're going to be far too
soon
in fact in medium grit sandpaper is
going to give you the same kind of
structure
that they came to you from the factory
with and that's going to be ideal
and most of the earth superficial
scratches in the base
will be removed by this sanding action
so a lot of things that look terrible on
your base
well actually look a lot better just
after the sending process
and things that you think might require
patching
are actually not in need of patching at
all once you've sanded them out at the
base to the skis
so let's go ahead and continue the
sanding process
okay
long strokes
trying to hit the fan paper flat and
even on the base
we keep the fan favorite tightly wrapped
around the sanding block when the
sandpaper
starts to clog with the their fries are
any wax residue
it's time to brush that out and you can
use your
your steel brush whilst any material
that plugging up here
sandpaper if you're starting to fill up
your sandpaper with any waxy residue
that's going to be very difficult to
remove and its
going to be time to change your paper to
a fresh pizza
sandpaper and don't be afraid to be
jenessa
with the sandpaper because its your time
that's valuable not the paper the
lessons is
me now that we finished
sending the basis that the skis it's
time to patch the major gadgets that
have occurred in the bottoms up our skis
how you assess the quality of the gal
jazz in the bottom if your skis is kind
of interesting
wanna make sure that the gadget thing
your skis
are the ones that are deep and the Ryan
perpendicular to the running like that
the skis Annie Huang
gal just that run lengthwise on the skis
are not
that significant unless they start to
get very deep
so the ones that we're going to address
initially
are the ones that are going to cause the
biggest problems and those are the ones
that are going to change the direction
of nature
skis because the run perpendicular or at
an angle
to the link a bit skis in order to patch
the skis were going to need some very
specialized tool
now the schools are not particularly
exotic but they are quite special
we use a specially designed soldering
iron
has a flattened tape on it and there are
lots of different tools out there for
doing this
butted lolol wattage iron designed
specifically for
patching ski basis is ideal not
particularly expensive
and they're well worth having and
they're certainly well worth learning
how to use properly
this iron is quite hot and we have to be
very careful in the way that we apply it
the secret to doing a base repair
is to weld the patch material
rate into the Gallic on the bottoms and
your skis
the whole process should not take
longer than 10 sack so if you're
applying the heat %uh this hot
iron to the bottom secure skis for
longer than 10 seconds
and you're having trouble in getting the
patch material to flow into your gal GGE
back of
and let it cool down and start over
again
as long as the iron it's clean
and you're working quickly you're going
to do a reasonably good job
patching the bottoms that your skis
liquefy
the patch material in the area
the patch and third
deposit a reservoir
have patch material in the hey if the
patch
when the iron starts to smoke it's time
to clean
the iron of all
and I just use a metal brush
to wipe the excess P text material we
don't want any of the scorching P text
material to contaminate
the patch area you can't so I've now
deposited
my patch material on the base
and now I'm going to apply
heat to both the patch material and the
area surrounding the patch where the
couches in order to weld
that into the Basu the skis and to do
that
I just simply use the flat the iron
and press down and this is where we
start to count one
to three and it is stronger than 10
seconds
back of and let it cool down
and then I'm going to bond
that patch to the base by pressing down
and running the iron over the area at
the couch
and the patch welding
the patch material to the base
can pack of Queen the iron kept
and go on to the next patch
by doing this we will eventually patch
mostly the large gouges in the base with
the ski
once its cooled we just simply fanned
the patch flap and smoooooth
2k so let's do that now
just sayin back and forth
until the patch disappears
right into the base
and it's done occasionally you'll notice
in the process of sending their patch
flat that you've exposed some little
air bubbles are some gaps in the patch
that the case
you just simply go back and do it over
again
just remember every time you redo a an
area that's been patched
it's going to get better the next step
is to finish the bases and eliminate
the fuzz that we've raised in the bottom
said the skis
by doing all this abrasive action with
sandpaper
the first step is to shave the files of
the skis
and we do that by running the scraper
along the length of the skis
you'll see that there's actually
lots of Oz great their contain
so run that in both directions because
the fuzz has a tendency to lie down when
you run the
scraper over it and remove the fuzz
on every passive the scraper
and this gets off most stillbirths
fis by running bad
back and forth the next step is to
remove
restive the by the material on the
bottom to view skis
by you think a had a fiber tech
remember fiber tax is this special
abrasive material that we use
for scraping the bottoms up our skis run
that back and forth
and as we do that you'll start to see
that the fuzziness at the bases
will start to get less fuzzy and
he eventually we will start looking like
a nicely polished
base that will be ready
for wax ap
well
the