Ski Base Conditioning

Base conditioning is the simple process of preparing new skis (or old skis with dry bases) for the winter season. When skis come from the factory chances are they have spent a short time in a waxing hot box but probably have never seen a real coat of wax on them. This means the pours on the base of the skis are not filled with wax which can result in compromised glide and dry white spots appearing on the bottom of your ski after a session. 

White on your base = dry and poorly conditioned base 

The following process of conditioning a will help fill the base pours with wax, help the ski retain wax, and smooth out any course dry areas of the base material. 

Step 1 – scrape and factory wax or old summer wax off of your ski and brush with a copper or steel hair brush, and polish with a nylon brush. 

Step 2 – Heat in 2-3 separate layers of a warm soft paraffin wax. (I use the TOKO NF Yellow or Red) Let each wax coat cool completely and make sure to do a good job scraping and brushing between layers. 

Step 3 – Iron in one layer of cold hard paraffin wax. The single layer of super hard wax will act as a barrier and help retain the softer layers of wax you just put it. Something like a Swix CH6 not cold enough, try for a green CH4 or something similar. Be careful not to burn the base while applying this coat. New bases are especially easy to burn so I recommend keeping the iron under 145F 

Step 4 – Let the hard paraffin layer cool completely. I often set my ski outside for 2-3 hours to make sure the wax hardens up well. Once you scrape and brush the cold wax layer you are ready to apply one more layer of wax to zero your skis for testing.

Zeroing your skis means applying the same type of wax on all of your race skis so when it comes time to test them you are able to have accurate glide test. Always applying the same non-race wax to your fleet will make it quick and easy to do ski testing on race day. CH6, LF6, TOKO NF Red, or LF Red are common waxes to use on a daily basis. These are great waxes to test with because as we like to say “they’re always going to be pretty good”. Medium-cold waxes in non-fluoro or low-fluoro will have the biggest range of ski-ability in all conditions and will not dry out the base coat after coat like some HF waxes.