Do Skis Get Blunt?
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Pretty much agree with everything those folks have written. Most definitely sharp edges, and your bevels, matter when you are really pushing it, especially if you are racing, and most especially if you are on extremely hard or even water-injected snow.
Outside of that type of skiing, the ski tech on the lift was, I think, making a point that is true enough for most "normie" skiers, and inadvertently the blog author validated it with the microscope experiment. The short version is that once your edge angles are set, "polishing" them with a diamond stone should, generally, mostly, be all that is necessary to restore the edge shape after use. No filing should be necessary. If the edge get damaged with rocks or rust, this is no longer true. All caveats apply. The ski tech is just trying to say "don't pay a shop to run your skis through the machine when all you need is to rub your edges with a diamond stone for a minute."
Now, just how practical this is, again depends on who you are. You'd have to be:
- A regular enough skier to own your own equipment
- Good enough to benefit from a tuned edge
- Technical and handy enough to buy a diamond stone and learn to use it
- It has to not be impractical to go through this ritual after skiing (try doing this with two or three young, tired kids in tow)
Anyway I just enjoyed having this be on the front page of HN today. I'm good at like 2 things and this is one of them.
Rocks are mostly an off-piste issue, but I have seen it happen on piste. Especially early and last season when cover can be low. Will occasionally also happen near the lift when a spot gets warn low. When I get rock gashes, it's always easier to just send them to the shop's machine.
Handling also introduces a fair amount of nicks. In theory, the edges should never meet at an awkward angle, but it happens. Skis slide around on the rack, skis flip out a position while carrying them, things shift in the car, etc, etc.
*laughs in East Coast*
> If the edge get damaged with rocks or rust, this is no longer true.
Anecdotally I do all the routine waxing and edge maintenance on my family's (wife and two kids) skis, and it's not that big a deal. Slightly less of a hassle than bringing gear to the shop to do it would be for me, and the kids enjoy hanging out with some hot cocoa and helping a bit. Once you have everything in your workspace set up right, it goes pretty fast.
The great filter of self-maintaining ski equipment.
I don’t have the space for a permanent setup and it’s just more convenient to drag the skis to the store once a year than buy the equipment, learn to use it, store it somewhere, remember where, etc.
I imagine many others (most?) feel the same.
I agree.
I've been skiing and snowboarding for over 30 years. I used to tune my skis and board religiously myself. Once I got married and had a few kids, it got cumbersome to tune my board, then two to three additional pairs of skis. Then I went back to just tuning mine and realized how much of a mess it makes and how time consuming it can be.
When I was younger, I loved doing it because it was a sort of a 'zen' process for me to lose myself for an hour or so and the idea of tuning my board like a pro and having to live with the results, for better or worse I always thought was cool. The idea of telling people you knew how to do this and you were really good at it also was apart of the mystique of being able to do it.
Now? I just take my stuff to a shop where I know the guys and they do a bang up job for me. Saves me the time and the people I ride with don't give a hoot whether I can tune my board, they just want to know if I can still ride those double black D's with them.
Your comment reminds me of gun cleaning. Most modern firearms require little more than occasional lubrication. Despite that reality, many gun owners thoroughly clean their guns after every trip to the range. Probably for similar reasons to those you describe.
Plus, I have had to learn to mount my own bindings because I telemark, and the local shops around here won't touch it, warranty it, or do a decent job. That alone has made me "fear" ski tech a lot less.
A lot of bullshit mystique set up by "pro" ski shops....
I have to ask, as someone into alpine touring and ski mountaineering (but not racing), what difference would backcountry skiing make to this advice? I imagine you'd need sharpening more often, due to twin factors of A) more rock and hard ice and B) really wanting that control on ungroomed (ie, icy) slopes at high angles.
I don't consider myself "really pushing it", but would like to have every ounce of control I can get when heading downhill. I'm enough of a beginner that I will often side-slip or even just hike completely down a slope I don't like the looks of.
So it’s a doubled edged…. edge?
Your best bet is to get your skis tuned at a shop that is knowledgeable about backcountry skiing and be brutally honest with them about your ability and the type of terrain you ride. They should set you up appropriately.
A full tune once or twice a year should be sufficient, unless you’re doing over 20 days or so.
If you have significant rock damage to your base or edge you should get it addressed asap.
apropos of this discussion, my main board probably never gets a serious tune now that I live in the rockies. back in VT, it was critical daily maintenance due to the amount of ice you actually encountered.
edit: learned something new!
Hot waxing permeates the pores in the ptex with oils from the wax, but you really want to scrape and brush it all off--there shouldn't be any residual wax remaining after.
I for one have always been a proponent of the lazy-man approach of letting the mountain do the scraping. Avoids the messiest part of the job. Sure the first run or two will be a touch slower, but unless you are serious enough to have a dedicated pair of race skis to schlep to the start, you aren't going to have a pristine base anyway.
If you are a beginner / intermediate skier (someone who never to rarely carves a ski), edges on the blunter side of things can actually help you out. Sure, it's a bit more sketchy on ice, however just doing a "slide turn" is going to be much easier. It will take less force to make your skis point where you want them too, making you much more confident. It's one of the reasons they put beginners on smaller skis. Less edge = easier turning.
I have skis that were kept dry and haven't been sharpened in years and ski perfectly fine and it's exactly how I want them.
Until you stop off at the bar on a Sunny day and ride home on dusk once everything has frozen again, then you'd be like "oh I wish I didn't tell everyone not to keep their edges in decent shape", as you fly off the cliff edge.
On the real however, getting down the mountain safely after dusk etc with dull vs. sharp edges will likely only affect intermediate skiers. Beginner skiers are going to crash no matter what they’re riding if on steep and icy terrain. Expert skiers know when and how to ride conservatively and can basically ride anything in any conditions “safely” (even if that means just sliding a firm patch rather than carving it), as long as they’re aware of the limitations of their gear. 90% of the year I ride pow skis in any conditions (including melt freeze etc) with super dull edges - it’s totally fine. The other 10% is just to have a little more fun on very firm days.
Intermediates, on the other hand, will be overly aggressive beyond their capabilities. They’ll bounce their helmet off a melt-frozen knoll at first opportunity, similar to what you said!
The comment seemed like a "I don't wear a helmet because it's uncool" sort of thing...just do your edges occasionally, what's the issue?
Point being, I’ve never found sharp edges matter much for most recreational riding. None of this has any relation to being uncool. Maybe in your wifes scenario, having razor sharp edges would have saved her from breaking her arm; almost certainly not.
In pow and crud, I don't know if the edges do really anything, except if there was any rust, they'd probably grip the crud a bit.
That's also the biggest downside, you can't really rip it with fat skis. Not even if you go down dead straight.
On true ice, NO ONE is ripping it except racers or ex-racers with good equipment.
Do I ever wish for a sharp edge when I occasionally end up on an icy plate scrubbed by snowboarders at the end of the day? Yes. But so rarely, that I never care enough to actually sharpen them.
Making your way down free ride or even groomed terrain at Tremblant or Whiteface etc after a typical northeastern rain->refreeze cycle... Nice sharp metal edges are a godsend.
You really do notice the difference on well maintained edges. On groomed slopes I can ski anything, and it doesn't really matter. But I don't think most people realize how icy a race track can become.
And no, no kids. But if I do, I'm thinking I'd like them to do something not as expensive and time consuming. But with my own 50 days skiing this winter, it might just end up being skiing anyways, heh.
Setting that up is difficult but it's pretty easy to maintain once it is there. Side cut.com has great advice and tools.
If you are on groomers and ski on decent skis, not powder boards, it is worth getting a tune.
For ski racing and carving on man made snow, it is very similar to ice skating, you'll want to tune very frequently.
Your son is good :-)
U16 is quite a step up, the courses get quite challenging at that level.
I don’t think there is any objective way to settle this debate. I think if you enjoy tuning skis, go for it. I like sharpening knives and tools so I get it. But I don’t bother with my skis.
Try it and see.. Note that when you race, you often do it on watered+salted hills where hundred people have followed the exact same track. Really icy.
It also might be a thing we're you're just not good enough to notice. I don't mean that as a slight, but seriously changing the angle of the edge of a ski is basically like racing a completely different pair. The feel of how it engages can quickly become too aggressive or lax.
If you gave a blind test, same exact skis but varied the tuning, most serious racers would be able to tell you what changed after a few turns. Edge or base bevel angles, wax, tuned or de-tuned. I haven't raced in years and I wager I would do pretty well on that test.
Youth racers tend to ski with one set of edges on the inside for training, and the other edges inside for racing (under the theory that the inside edges take more of a beating. Who knows if that is accurate). If you ever see youth racers on slalom skis (which are chiral, since they have tips that deflect ski gates), you’ll often notice that the skis are on the “wrong” foot.
Also, that's awesome that you competed WC moguls. I probably saw you compete depending on when you were active, and we almost definitely know some of the same people.
On another note, this is apparantely a high-risk occupation due to exposure to PFAS and other carcinogens in ski wax. The FIS recently banned the use of fluorinated wax in competitions, but it was the norm for many years. Not great to be a ski tuner breathing in all those heated/aerosolised PFAS compounds...
That would be interesting, as all the worries about PFAS is more along the lines of "it may be bad, and if it is we are screwed as we have dumped so much of it in nature and it doesn't degrade", but concrete evidence is still lacking today.
Note that overheated PTFE is bad, but we are talking over 250°C, which is, I believe, way less than the temperatures used by ski tuners.
There are certainly cases in other industries (such as the Dupont factory workers) who have demonstrably high rates of disease from occupational exposure to PFAS.
The evidence was certainly compelling enough to convince the FIS to ban fluorinated wax, and from what I understand this ban is taken quite seriously. They have devices to check for fluorinated compounds on skis, and even the smallest trace of it can get you disqualified.
If anyone has any methods to reliably grind edges at home, I'd be interested. I have one of the edge tools and a bunch of files, but I basically destroyed a pair of skis (thankfully an old crummy pair, put to new use as part of an adirondack chair built from my busted skis) when trying to get it right. Considering a local shop will do it for $40 / pair, that seems like a better use of my time. Still, I've got that DIY itch to scratch about this and haven't seemed to get it right.
Professional chefs get their knives sharpened once or twice a year, depending on how often they use them. They hone their knives before every use. The honing rod that comes with your knife set is there to realign the steel molecules along the blade edge. Sharpening your knife removes metal and creates a new blade edge, which you have to hone frequently for it to stay as sharp as you want it.
I wonder if the ski tech person was using terminology correctly but the skier/blogger didn't quite understand.
Or with a tool like Swix TA3008 it's hard to do wrong. Maybe need someone to set up the base angles, but then you can use it to touch up for years.
Check out this tool: https://www.sidecut.com/product/BEBM.html?Category_Code=base...
It's ridiculous how much you can spend on tuning gear.
Also, in the north east, tuned skis absolutely matter, whatever level you are. My wife has been learning to ski and had trouble with ice. So I put on her beginner skis, and said, ahh no wonder, went back and tuned them. Then I put her on my slalom skis because she didn't trust her skis to initiate a turn (slalom skis are famously quick to initiate), and she could turn them quickly. Then I tuned one edge of each slalom ski with a more aggressive tune, but she could swap back to regular if she wanted. Finally, she was skidding her turns too much, so I put her on my GS skis, which forced her to patiently start the turn then follow it through. She now has a good idea of when she's having trouble with the ski shape, the conditions or the ski tune after 35 total days of skiing.
If you put a beginner or intermediate on race skis, make sure the tune is mellow enough. Slalom skis at 0.5 and 86, will hunt when not turning, and can grab an edge throwing you to the ground. At the steeper angles (86/87 vs 88/89) it is much harder to skid the ski for speed control. When you head out with a beginner, you can always bring a diamond stone and detune the tip/tail, on the mountain even. They will notice the difference and appreciate it.
If you're a powder hound in Utah or Niseko, then it matters a lot less.
I had to stop using my beloved “ice cutters” because one of the bindings failed to release in the shop. Up to that point, I had rarely been disappointed by them releasing too easily, and always relieved when they did release.
Make sure that they use one of your boots for the test.
An effective way to test your bindings - put your skis on at a flat area and with boots done up, dig your edge in and try to twist your boot out of the ski binding with your own muscular power. It will hurt a bit and be hard to do, but if you can't, you need to lower your din.
Not anymore, you can’t.
Epic is $1004. Ikon is $1359.
The article shows edges and the effect of sharpening.
However, I would imagine corrosion makes much of the surface of the ski more abrasive and that could explain the grabbiness.
Is there any science behind the edge assertions? almost all of it is anecdotal.
I can't help but think of overengineering and a/v systems.
For example, I can't tell any difference from different speaker wires (except bad cables), but I do notice hiss in amplifiers. And I think OLED might be superior, but honestly dark scenes are horrible during daylight hours unless you have blackout curtains in the room with the panel. No review or marketing ever talks about these practical details. Same with reflections with glossy screens.
I don't worry about corrosion much, but I'm tuning the skis I use on ice every couple of days.
My powder skis get waxed every few days, edges only to set up the angles once. Maybe once a season after that or to fix as best I can when hitting rocks.
There, any advantage is very important, ie how precisely you put skins on skis to leave that little bit of edge for... edging, at least thats what we call it. I don't think it makes a massive difference there how sharp your edges are, but in steep icy/crusty slopes where your skis don't even leave a mark as you pass, only crampons a bit, everything helping is more than welcome. I never clean them thoroughly though so edges are rusty, 10-15 years of moderate use of skis makes no difference to me.
Also, in usual piste skiing in resorts, if you go really fast, at least relative to rest of skiers, and slope is a bit icy, sharp edges make a lot of difference in how stable skis are in turns. There even I can feel difference between dulled and sharpened ones.
East Coast? I’m a Rocky Mountain skinner and I can’t remember the last time I edged off piste.
Also have backcountry nordic pair with metal edges for similiar reason — tho i only debur them, never sharpened.
On piste skinning is mostly because it’s where the snow is until the back country fills in later in the season.
My father was also of the opinion that wax was a scam as he stated it would likely wear off in the first few runs. The idea was it filled in the scratches on the ski bottoms leaving a flatter surface. Maybe it works. maybe it doesn't. I always enjoyed watching the guys in the ski shops apply it by taking a slice of wax and then using a clothes iron, melt it like a pat of butter along the bottom.
I'd say wax is important in that it prevents the base from oxidizing. A dried out base is more difficult to turn and slower.
Structure (small grooves in the base) will make you a second faster)
Wearing a race suit vs a normal tight coat will make you two seconds faster.
Proper setup edges vs no tune rounded edges will make you 5-6 seconds faster and with much lower chances of dsq.
The type of wax is much less important. In a slalom race, choosing the best wax vs a less perfect type might only improve you by 0.02 seconds on a sixty second long race.
Going from dull edges (even “well maintained” ones) to freshly sharpened is quite noticeable on icy days. I use 0°/4° and like the responsiveness and grip.
From my long past race days (when I had to maintain several pairs simultaneously), I could tell that the wax design temp mattered deeply, though mostly >25f vs lower temp. High temp waxes are down right sticky in cold snow (and vice versa). But cold waxes are largely fine for middle temps (~10-20f or whatever). The (horrifying) fluoro stuff was also very effective, though probably banned by now if anyone is sane. I wasn’t able to tell the difference beyond the temp though, unless the skis were damaged. Though, I mostly just don’t wax these days since I’m not trying to eek out extra speed.
Base bevel (the angle trimmed off the metal edge from the side that sits on the snow) matters and is largely ignored by skiers/snowboarders, since tuners are cautious, and skiers don’t know to ask. It determines how responsive the skis are (going from 0° to 1° means you need to tilt your leg an extra degree). You can only decrease it (or clean it up) by flattening the entire base and then sharpening, which requires specialized equipment.
Edge bevel matters, but allegedly has diminishing returns. It (allegedly) gives a bit of extra grippyness. I’ve never quite understood why it matters, since it seems like it just narrows the metal very slightly. From my A/B testing, the freshness of the sharpening seems to matter more than the edge angle, but I’ve also never set it below 2°.
If I recall correctly
25mm was the older "skinnier" size that was prevalent in the peloton, or even 23s or smaller.
I think it also became apparent that rolling resistance was reduced on wider tires, so if an aerodynamic (and weight) formula could be made to make 28mm viable, it was better.
Per wiki ice has mohs hardness of 2 to 4 depending on temperature and if it has fallen out of the sky I guess it shouldn't be mixed with sand or other abrasives.
How is it abrasive then?
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sci...
>The most important type of ice nuclei is mineral dusts blown into the atmosphere from deserts, arid lands, and agricultural fields. The International Mineralogical Association (IMA) defines minerals as naturally occurring solid substances formed in geological processes.
IIRC snow makers use particulates too.
1. All snow has some level of particulates, especially older snow (moreso if there has been melting, because the particles/dirt/whatever concentrate on top).
2. Cornering on piste would put pretty big stresses on the tip of the edge. This could perhaps cause the edge to bend and curl, or even break little pieces off from metal fatigue. I think this would be a bigger deal in most winter skiing conditions.
In central european ski resorts, largest parts of ski lopes are not natural snow anymore (or are mostly mixed natural/artificial). And artificial snow has far more sharp crystals than natural snow.
You're right. Snow isn't hard enough, but, it's probably a mistake to assume it's just snow.
Pressure is a huge variable. In a typical Moh's test, there is very little: just a person rubbing two stones together by hand. But with enough pressure, liquid water (hardness: none) can cut steel. Lead can damage steel or quartz if fired out of a gun. Etc.
And as others have mentioned, snow might have particles of other materials in it as well. But just to be clear: Moh's scale does not mean that pure ice could never abrade steel.
I don't ski often enough to own my own skis, so I rent them. Having used those rentals in icy conditions, I've had a lousy time due to their shoddy edges. A tool like this would make my day(s) on the slopes so much better. Anybody know of a place I could buy something like this, so that I could bring the rentals into "serviceable" condition?
A good tester is to see if the skis edge grips the surface of your finger nail, the same way you would test a knife or a sharp tool (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHEuV2CPE3w). If it slides across it with no friction, then it's a blunt ski.
Personally, I would advice against trying to tune skis manually, because you might just as easily blunt the edge as you might sharpen it if you don't have a good jig and tools.
Through my 12 years of teaching skiing, I will say that more often than not people who complain about icy conditions are held back by their technique; are you skid steering or carving, because when you are skid steering no level of ski tuning can make your edges stay on hard snow. (Tip: This guy has made an incredible amount of videos about the topic and has even himself progressed from being a skid steering freestyle skier to now being an excellent carver. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwWFlltWQTU).
Just looking at your skies and seeing an 'issue' doesn't tell you anything besides the fact that yes something had fun with that edge.
Questions which are completly unanswered: How long does a sharp edge actually stay as it is? If it looks like this after 5 minutes, it doesn't matter.
It also doesn't say if it was snow, ice or stones/ground killing that edge.
And as far as i remember, he didn't say anything regarding the waxing.
Stopped reading around there. He actually took a microscope to verify what should be common sense for anyone with a basic understanding of physics. And then didn't even do it properly like you point out.
Is it only my perception or are people getting more gullible/stupid? It's something I notice more and more, someone says something obviously ridiculous but instead of dismissing it and filing the person under 'nutter', my feeling is more and more misinformation is taken serious or at least considered as potentially true. Or maybe it's an increasing lack of social skills? Maybe there's a decreasing understanding of the fact that the chance of running into a random guy telling tall tales, being misinformed or outright crazy is high when you're out somewhere with hundreds of people.
After all, it's not like a knife trying to cut through a piece of meat
The effect of a newly sharpened ski is noticeable immediately even if you're an absolute beginner. Even moreso if you're on a snowboard.
Source: 30 years of skiing and snowboarding.
The difference is quite pronounced.
I agree with the quoted skier in the post, tuning skis doesn’t matter. I am someone who puts 400+ days on one pair of skis before replacing them, I ski pretty rough terrain and hit my share of rocks, I’ve gotten maybe 3 ski tuneups in my life, I couldn’t tell the difference after any of them. The only things I did to care for them was to store them dry and wax them once per season.
In my experience true ice isn’t that bad in terms of grip, it’s rarely so smooth that edges can’t easily grip on surface imperfections. It’s not fun to ski because it’s very high impact.
I think what most people talk about as icy and slippery that seems to form on skied off groomers is actually some kind of crust that is hard to get edge hold in because the snow is somehow very firm but not well bonded to itself either, so what little edge penetration you get just scrapes off easily and doesn’t support the ski. When I try to picture what is going on in such snow, edge sharpness doesn’t matter, you might penetrate marginally deeper but that just means you’re scraping marginally more snow off.
Edges matter on ice. And yes, the difference is noticable (if the edga has been blunt "enough").
Recreationally, if you are on a narrow groomer type ski on icy runs, every few days is great and will help you enjoy and improve faster. Well fitted ski boots are more critical though.
HOWEVER 99% of the skiers on a mountain (and yes I mean 99%) do not actually ski on their edges, they do skidded turns (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4hioJ4ThJA). And the same 99% will typically just slide off of hard and icy parts of a slope as they aren't comfortably riding their edge. To these people sharp edges matter, but less than to the few who successfully carve.
But if you are within that 1% of skiers that do ski mostly on the edge, then a sharp edge is extremely important; you see true carving technique is a delicate skill:
In order to carve properly you need to need to get your skis in a steep angle with the snow, which means you need to get your feet in a steep angle, which can only be maintained if you move your center of gravity into a position that isn't above your feet. Which effectively means your body is in a position that is out of balance. Similarly to how sprinting essentially is just leaning forwards and playing "catch up" with our legs, carving technique tries to do the same. Exception being that we use the rhythmical centripetal forces of turns and the resistance of the snow to create the balancing force (https://d3t7modobimpp4.cloudfront.net/uploads/_1200xAUTO_fit...).
And this is why edges matter; because if the centripetal force provided from the carving turn isn't generated because the skis blunt edges cause them to slip, then instead of generating movement towards the skiers body (reestablishing balance), the skis will drift away from the skiers body (removing balance) resulting in poor turns if not slipping down onto ones hip.
TL;DR: Very good skiers NEED sharp edges to ski well. Most skiers will be fine. (As a matter of fact I think 99% of all skiers will do just fine on ANY ski, and make more significant improvement from 2 days of ski school than any equipment upgrade or tuning that money can buy).
You could teach a beginner how to carve on a very flat slope though. The 99 percent that slide are just on too steep of a slope for their carving ability. Which is fine by the way. It's fun to go down steeper runs, even if you arent carving.
In which country? I thought carving was relatively popular with locals in the Alps (Switzerland, Austria, etc). At least it looks like that's what they're doing to me, but maybe they still do it wrong.
The truth is that carving technique is just very difficult and more importantly counter intuitive and thus people simply do not learn it on their own as they stop doing ski lessons once they can skid steer, as to many they think this is the same as carving.
So what people do is instead of carving perfectly, they deliberately slip to create some friction and slow themselves down.
As an amateur alpine tourist who is deathly afraid of that feeling of "loss of control" from incredible downhill speeds, this is exactly what I do.
That said, I'm here reading because I want to know if the heuristic for sharpening changes when A) one is mostly off-piste (rock, hard ice, etc) and B) really want those edges sharp for ungroomed (ie, icy) slopes.
Here is one of the best skiers in the world, on a race course set on a surface intentionally prepared to be solid ice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIHdHUg1FC4