Filing Your Ski Bases

The other reason people tend to ignore their ski edges is that they are afraid of messing them up.  This is a healthy fear.  Done properly edge tuning can increase your performance.  Done improperly a file can render your skis useless and make them undesirable for resale.  Take a minute and watch this video on how to file your ski base and you’ll see that it really is simple and can be done at home with a simple flat file.  The alteranative is to take it to a shop where you will pay $50-100 for the same thing and shop guys are sometimes too lazy or busy to use a file and will just run your skis through a base grinder (this is overkill for most maintenance and also shrinks the thickness of your base).

How to Fix a Core Shot

The pent up anticipation of the upcoming ski season got the better of you and that premature trip to the mountain with a 16 inch base came with a price, sigh.  Well don’t despair, the proverbial ‘core shot’ tear in your base doesn’t have t mean a new pair of skis (even if it does mean lower resale value).  Petex is your friend and here are the steps to get the best repair you can.

1. Thoroughly trim off any chunks or hairs of base that have slivered off but are still attached.  A sharp box knife or razor works well for this.  Also, pick out any grit or dirt that may have become lodged during the scratch.

2. Select the appropriate color petex (generally either black or clear).  Petex is a hard material that can be melted and will bond well with your base materials.  Most ski shops carry it for about $3-5 a stick.

3. Heat up the base and core until it is warm, but not too hot to touch (you don’t want to heat up the core too much or it will warp).  This will help the base, core, and petex to bond better.  A hand held acetylene torch that can be purchased at the hardware store for under $10 works great for this.

4. Begin to heat up the petex stick with the torch until it begins to drip liquid petex.  Let the first few drops fall on a rag as these usually contain a fair amount of carbon residue and won’t bond very well.

5. Drip the petex into the groove in your base in a back-and-forth pattern slowly filling the defect up.  You may have to use the torch a few times to keep the petex liquid and dripping during this step.  It is important to overfill the groove so that there is a mound of petex and not a dip when you are done.

6. Allow this to dry thoroughly.  Usually about 15-20 minutes is enough.

7. Using a thin metal or sharp plastic scraper, remove the mounded petex just like scraping wax off of your ski until the surface is flat with the ski base.

8. Draw a flat file across the base to remove any small irregularities and smooth any edge damage.

9. Re-wax the skis with a fresh hot wax.

The good news is that this will protect your ski core from water damage and allow you to continue to use them without worry.  The bad news is that even the best petex job has a limited life and this process may have to repeated several times per season.  Oh well, lesson learned, next time just take your old rock skis up on those early season days.