Midland Ski Club - Ski Preparation Guide & Aide Memoir

Ski Racing Supplies

To get the best performance in plastic ski slope racing, snow racing and during training it is essential that you maintain and prepare your skis correctly. This guide is provide to help you achieve this and has been taken from the course run by Ski Racing Supplies for the Midland Ski Club in October 2005.

- Use a good quality sharp edge medium cut ski file preset or set at the right angle

1. The sharper the file less effort required and less likely hood of slipping or cutting hands.
2. If you need to remove a lot of edge then it is best to use a radial file first
3. Don't let your skis get blunt edges as will be harder to sharpen them - it is better to remove a little often rather than a lot occasionally
4. Don't let your file work into the plastic sidewall of the ski, this will clog the file and blunten it
5. Instead use a sidewall cutter to remove excess and allow edge sharpener to work on the edge only.

• Slalom Skis - 89 degrees (1 on some sharpeners)
• Giant Slalom Skis - 88 degrees (2 on some sharpeners)
• Super G Skis - 87 degrees (3 on some sharpeners)
• Downhill Skis - 86 degrees (4 on some sharpeners)

For snow de-burr the edges with a diamond file.

Use a radial file to remove

• Slalom, GS and Super G - flat file bases (0 degrees)
• Downhill - special Base Edge Bevel sharpener to set base edge angle in relationship to side edge angle

This needs to be done when the ski edge sharpening file starts cutting in to the plastic sidewall of the ski

Build up wax in the ski by using a soft wax (pink in demo). Apply and scrape off cold 5 times. Finally apply appropriate wax for race or normal use.

1. If necessary clean out old wax by either using a wax removing agent or soft hot waxing and scrape off whilst still warm.
2. Brush base by brushing with Bronze brush tip to tail.
3. Then same with White nylon brush
4. Final brush with Blue soft polishing brush
5. Apply 1st wax layer of Hard White wax as smoothly as possible with an iron at the appropriate temperature (180 degrees).Just enough to soak into the base and provide a thin coat on top.
6. Scrape off any large irregularities with plastic scraper.
7. When cool apply 2nd wax layer of Hard White in the same way.

- instead of a dribbling wax along the whole length of the ski then ironing in, do it as you go in small sections at a time

1. if the iron is smoking its too hot!
2. clean wax off the iron each time so that you do not contaminate the base next time.
3. Polish up with Blue soft polishing brush
4. Apply a layer of superslip or similar
5. Finally just prior to race apply MrSheen / car wax concoction to enable fast get away from start.