I have been reading a lot of interesting posts about the topic of stone grinding vs belt grinding machines in this forum, but it seems that there is no 100% agreement on the proper workflow when using these machines.
A bit of background: in my spare time I do simple maintenance of ski’s for friends and the occasional customer (wax / ptex repair / edges sharpening, all manual) and rent out touring gear. I’m currently looking into buying a combined belt / stone grinder (cheap) to do some basic ski maintenance for own ski’s / rental the (touring) ski’s / friends / occasional customers but I’m in no way doing maintenance for racers or people understanding the concept of base bevels vs edge angles or know the difference between a 1-2-3° angle (so really basic tunes). Since it's really hard to find any information on this on my country (we don't have any mountains), was happy to read on all the insightful information on this board.
Anyhow: I have the opportunity to buy an older Reichmann machine that is still working properly (1995-ish) with a combined belt / stone grinder but looking for some answers:
A bit of background: in my spare time I do simple maintenance of ski’s for friends and the occasional customer (wax / ptex repair / edges sharpening, all manual) and rent out touring gear. I’m currently looking into buying a combined belt / stone grinder (cheap) to do some basic ski maintenance for own ski’s / rental the (touring) ski’s / friends / occasional customers but I’m in no way doing maintenance for racers or people understanding the concept of base bevels vs edge angles or know the difference between a 1-2-3° angle (so really basic tunes). Since it's really hard to find any information on this on my country (we don't have any mountains), was happy to read on all the insightful information on this board.
Anyhow: I have the opportunity to buy an older Reichmann machine that is still working properly (1995-ish) with a combined belt / stone grinder but looking for some answers:
- Do you actually need a belt grinder or can you do everything as well with only a stone grinder?
- If yes, when do you use the belt grinder? For establishing a flat base / setting base bevel?
- How often do you need to redress the stone? Every other pair? Every time you change the structure? Occasionally? How time consuming is this?
- If you receive a ski with slightly damaged base + slight convex base, what is the proper workflow?
- Clean base
- Ptex base
- Scrape off excessive ptex
- Deburr (bases only?) edges
- Pregrind stone (I read somewhere)?
- Belt grind until base is even
- Stone grind new structure?
- Polish cork?
- Set edge angle by using razor tune / belt grinder
- When / how do you set base bevel? Is this done through the belt grinding part? Or done manually or with e.g. Wintersteiger Trimdisc 71 (also for sale cheap) and at what stage?
- Open door: How difficult is it to learn how to use such a machine without destroying your ski’s (I have enough “single” ski’s to do some practicing, but still…)?