Fully waxed base of skis  (hardening the bases)

The purpose of using a heatbox is to get a soft wax saturated into the bases of skis. We only use a heatbox for skis that I stone grind.  For skis that we clean and fully wax for customers, we use an iron for the soft wax and for the hard wax.  I am not convinced that the temperature of the heatbox (57C’) is hot enough to saturate the bases of skis that have been used.

When you use an iron with an iron temperature of 150 C’ to iron in a hard (usually green) wax, it gets the hard wax into the base of the skis.  This hard wax is an excellent base for most if not all other waxes.

When the bases of the skis are saturated by using a soft wax first, the soft wax penetrates deeper into the base than does a hard wax when using an iron. As a result of the mixing of the soft and hard waxes when ironing in the hard wax, the hard wax is drawn further into the base of the ski. 

Considering that there is significantly more hard wax which has been applied to the base of the ski than the amount of soft wax in the base, after 2 passes of the iron there may well be 95% of hard wax in the base.  For performance/racing situations I repeat the hardening process twice.   After all this, basically there is almost no soft wax in the base of the ski.  If you harden the bases of skis in which the base has been saturated with a soft wax, the hard wax will last longer than if you were to iron in the hard wax on a dry base.

When an iron temperature of 150⁰C is used to iron in a hard wax, the surface of the base of the ski becomes seared.  If you take a cabinet scraper with a sharp edge and remove a thin layer of the base of a ski that has been hardened, and a thin layer of the base of a ski that has not been hardened, by using a magnifying glass, you can see a difference. As best I can describe it, the edges of the cells of the hardened base are fuzzier/more rounded than the cells of the base that has not been ‘hardened’.  The process does not really harden the bases, it sears the pores/cells on the surface of the bases of the skis. Done properly it does not damage the bases of the skis.

In the past, in wet dirty conditions high flouro powders were often used as a surface application.   Often, the skis were faster if there was no wax in the base of the skis. If skis had wax ironed in, the wax was removed before the races.  When ironing in the powders, with iron temperatures at least 150⁰C, the bases of the skis became seared. Therefore, if skis had not been previously fully waxed properly it did not matter.  Now that the high flouro powders have been banned, when waxing for wet dirty conditions, the waxes being used may not require the use of an iron. If the skis have not been fully waxed the bases of the skis may not have been seared.

If the bases of skis have been fully waxed properly, the bases of the skis will be seared. Skis in which the bases have been seared will be faster in all conditions.

Skis that are fully waxed will be faster in cold conditions and wet conditions in which dirt is not an issue.

With the advent of liquid waxes, waxing skis particular for training is significantly simpler.  Although liquids can work well on ski bases that have no wax ironed in, the skis will perform better if bases of the skis have been fully waxed. I highly recommend for skate skis, classic skis and skin skis that are used for training and/or racing, the  bases of your skis have been fully waxed properly.