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When to crayon and not to crayon wax?

Dwight

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I crayon, even at the shop. I always touch wax to iron and then crayon. With snowboards I do either crayon or drip.
 

tube77

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Hard waxes (CH5/CH6 and below) are difficult to rub on the base so they are better to be ironed.
On the other hand, soft waxes are easier to rub on so you can do the crayon method a few times after hot iron waxing.
 

Delicious

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I find manufactureres of new skis greatly vary, some I can ski 10 days easy without wax, others look horrible after 1-2 days.
This. I maintain some Head Titans for my neighbor. He just picked up a new pair this season. I can't believe how much wax those bases drank! He skied them all week on a Big Sky vacation (hammered bases and edges) but the bases were still greasy. Very impressive base quality in those skis.
 
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anders_nor

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He calls it "pro-glide" now: https://skimd.com/pro-glide

I have (had?) one from him; I was never able to get any sort of decent results from using it. @Steve , do you just rub cold wax on your bases? and then rub it in with Mike's tool?
what, your allowed to rub things both ways on bases theese days? ref his brushing, and crayoning. all my teachings has always been one way, always, always. looks like a super clean way to do it though.
 

James

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How are people crayoning CH4 without heating it? Basically impossible. Then people who’ve never used it try it and give up.
Even scraping it without heating leads to it chipping and exploding off the base. To scrape hard cold waxes like CH 4, heat a section, scrape, repeat. You do not need melting temp on the iron, but see what works.
what, your allowed to rub things both ways on bases theese days? ref his brushing, and crayoning. all my teachings has always been one way, always, always. looks like a super clean way to do it though.
You can run the iron any way you want. The “danger” is if there’s a burr on the bottom that scratches the bases. (Whether that even matters for direction is another issue.) So, don’t have a scratchy iron.

There’s techniques for brushing out the last remnants of wax from structure, or brushing out fluoros ,(or whatever will replace them), by scrubbing back and forth. The only one direction is generally true, but as an edict is a myth and more part of the black magic that many people believe because that’s what they were taught.

In reference to Ski MD’s application, here’s another example of how the “tip to tail” edict gets in the way of what one is doing and what actually matters All your doing is creating lots of localized friction to melt the wax in. If the device you’re doing it with is basically smooth, it doesn’t matter which direction you go. It would be difficult to generate friction heat just going one way, so the back and forth is used.
 
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Steve

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He calls it "pro-glide" now: https://skimd.com/pro-glide

I have (had?) one from him; I was never able to get any sort of decent results from using it. @Steve , do you just rub cold wax on your bases? and then rub it in with Mike's tool?

I crayon on the wax cold. I rub it in with the Proglide for a coupe of minutes. I brush with horsehair. Done. It lasts one long day or two mornings.
 

Steve

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LF7, LF6 and universal wax is all I've done this way. I have not used cold wax. For a very cold day I might hot wax and use cold powder along the edges like I used to do, but I've been OK with just rubbing some wax in. I'm not racing. Skis glide really nicely, bases don't dry out.
 

Steve

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After a lot of years going for the perfect wax job I've gotten to the point that protecting my bases and giving me somewhat better glide is fine.

Again, early season I base prep multiple times, so there's a lot of wax impregnated in the base.

Kind of similar to filing edges very rarely, but diamond stones in between filings. The pro glide is maintenance wax.
 

Jersey Skier

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I have been crayoning in LF7 and rubbing it in with a Wax Whiz all season. 45 days so far. My skis run great and the bases look great. I'd been hot waxing for years, now just do it early season with base prep wax and not again all season.

Always seemed like it took a lot of effort to use the Wax Whiz. But it's great for traveling for a quick wax in the hotel. I also throw it in my car during the Spring in case I need more Spring wax.
 

Noodler

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He calls it "pro-glide" now: https://skimd.com/pro-glide

I have (had?) one from him; I was never able to get any sort of decent results from using it. @Steve , do you just rub cold wax on your bases? and then rub it in with Mike's tool?

The Pro Glide was originally called the Ray's Way Wax WHIZard. I actually got one before Ray sold off the product to Mike. You can easily build one yourself, not much to it. I find that it works really well for paste and rub-on waxes, giving them better penetration and durability. Quick and easy to use too.
 

Tom K.

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Huh? Pics!

Here you go. Bonus background pics of Dad's last year of skiing and Tom the Much Younger racing dirt bikes! :ogbiggrin:

IMG_3782.JPG
 
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anders_nor

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Tried the cold and hot crayon styles + fiberlene for less scrapeing, and sure enough there are some pretty big differences with the waxes, some works superwell while cold, others does not, new fluorfree all seems to work fairly well even cold.

the touch to iron then crayon method worked very well for all, and was superfast as well. Also tested different methods with fiberlene cloth between towel and ski, whats the most usual waypeople do it? 1 long sheet across ski? double up & drag? single & drag under?

I tried PS8, HS8, LF8, CH8 today.

Also scored swix LF and CH for less than $3 per 180 gram packs today, apparantly stopping selling them... so I have multiple KG now :)

first pic is coldcrayon, 2nd is touch to iron superfast, then crayon

2021-02-26 21.16.36.jpg
2021-02-26 21.17.27.jpg
 

raytseng

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Also tested different methods with fiberlene cloth between towel and ski, whats the most usual waypeople do it? 1 long sheet across ski? double up & drag? single & drag under?
fiberlene method i think depends on your exact fiberlene you gotta tune in the temp and drag speed a bit. as if you got swix vs toko vs svst fiberlene vs cheapskate kitchen or garage shop papertowels all different.

For me its still going to be 1 sheet fiberlene, slightly longer than iron length, o it will saturated but still pushes/drags the wax.
My personal fiberlene technique, what I visualize is like a sponge or paper towel wiping a wet table. so if you go tip to tail majority of the absorption was at the front, and you now moved more (or most) of the excess wax to the tail, and may have exceeded your sheets absorption capacity. then with fresh sheet go the other way. 2nd pass the soak and load up more of the excess tail wax and then redistributes it evenly back to the front. Repeat as necessary if there is still too much wax after 2passes, fresh sheet every time.

My exact technique may vary if doing skinny skis and the sheet can cover the whole width during the pass. If Im doing fat skis may then need to do a circular style, much like a zamboni in an icerink
 
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Jacques

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This thread confused me I guess.
I assumed it was about crayon, then iron the wax.
Just crayon and no iron is usually referred to as "rub-on".
Any wax can be rubbed on. You might need some serious elbow grease for a hard wax!
 

Noodler

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Personally, I avoid the crayon process (at least with harder waxes). A hard wax brick crayoned aggressively can impact your ski base structure. Get out a magnifying glass and see what a cold wax brick can do to your ski bases.
 

Steve

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Personally, I avoid the crayon process (at least with harder waxes). A hard wax brick crayoned aggressively can impact your ski base structure. Get out a magnifying glass and see what a cold wax brick can do to your ski bases.

Really? I had never considered that, I'd think that ptex is harder than wax. I'll have to play around with that. I love the magnifying glass on the iPhone.
 

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