Ski Tuning Tools

[Blue Streak]

Start with good brushes and a couple of diamond stones. Then leave the ugly stuff for Wintersteigers

 

[Read Blinn]

Start with good brushes and a couple of diamond stones. Then leave the ugly stuff for Wintersteigers

. . . and a competent tech. They don't always coexist.

 

[BGreen]

Cheap and good in Canada is sidecut.com. The aforementioned Side Of Beast file guide is worth the money and better than any other angle guide I've used by a mile. Get a decent wax iron like a Toko T-8 or Swix T-77, both about $40-$70 depending on sales.

Get a good, cheap "most temperature" wax, and by that I mean a wax with a temp range that covers most of your normal conditions. For example, Dominator HX77 (turquoise) runs 5-20f and costs about $50/400g. Dominator Zoom covers 10-32f and is the same price.

There are good tuning videos on YouTube from Start Haus and Artech, and the Artech videos spend a good bit of time talking about setting up your tuning space. You can make a perfectly serviceable ski tuning ski holder with some ingeniuity and spare wood (google it) but a good vise will last a very long time, like decades.

If you have a shop you like and trust, have them tune your skis on the Montana. Ask to have your sidewalls race prepped. Make sure you know what your side bevel is. Buy a Side Of Beast with that bevel. Every day after you ski, run a medium diamond stone over your edges with the SOB. When that doesn't seem to bring back the sharpness, run a couple passes with a file (in the SOB) and again with the diamond. When that doesn't bring back the same sharpness, take them back to the shop for a tune, or really just get your edges done with a ceramic edger (TriOne, Montana Monty/Carrot, etc.). You'll probably find can get 10-15 days between trips to the shop if you touch them up every day if you aren't on super aggressive snow.

If you decide to go crazy and buy a ceramic edger, the Black Diamond Innovations unit that Sidecut sells is IMO best of breed.

 

[Sibhusky]

I don't even bring my skis into the shop every season. They get waxed and tuned by me roughly every 60,000 feet. That varies a bit over the course of the winter due to conditions, but the shop to me is just a risk I won't take any more. That's why I started doing my own structuring.

 

[Jacques]

For side bevels, I'm a big fan of the "Side of the BEAST" guide. Not exactly cheap, but you can buy additional angle shims at modest price. If you have to maintain different side edge angles on different skis then this could be the cheaper solution - rather than a drawer full of traditional guides dedicated to different angles. Anyway, I've probably tried most of the manual side edge sharpening tools over the years and (for me) this tool is just simpler & more efficient to use than the traditional side bevel guides.

I like too. Here is how to improve the Side Of The BEAST Pro. Same goes for the BEAST sidewall planer and it needs a lot of sanding to take the sharp edges off the glide plate.