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Comment by emgeee | Hacker News Reader

Could definitely be wrong but I always thought waxing was about reducing the friction between the ski and the snow by both creating a uniform surface and because the wax has a lower coefficient of friction than the plastic of the skis.

edit: learned something new!

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A uniform surface is actually not ideal, as it causes a lot of suction between the base and the snow, that's why ski and snowboard bases have "structure" ground into them with a stone grinder--that's what getting a base grind does, it restores the base's structure.

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.

>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.

I used to just scrape (no brushing) and let the first few runs do the work but then at some point I started brushing and realized that it made a big difference. I think what was happening (could be checked with the author's microscope) was the snow was wearing off the wax on the lands of the base structure but the grooves still had at least some wax--so it was essentially forming a less sharply structured base.

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