I recently bought a
Razor-Tune. It's a power sharpener for ski side edges. I decided to document my first time using it. I tested on an old Blizzard GSR. The photos were taken with a macro lens and cropped/resized so they represent the same exact section of side edge with the same number of pixels.
Here's what the ski looked like before. It had a coat of storage wax over a hand tune. I rubbed off most of the wax with a cloth.
After 4-5 passes with the coarse wheel, it looked like this:
Next I did 6-8 passes with the medium wheel and got this:
I then put some WD-40 on the fine wheel and did four passes, yielding this:
I then polished the base edge with a yellow (400) Moonflex in a 1-degree guide and got this (not much different):
Finally, for comparison, I hand polished the side edge with a yellow Moonflex in a 3-degree guide, resulting in this:
The Razor-Tune comes from the factory set for 3-degrees. There's also a 2-degree plate in the box. It's pretty straightforward to use if you're coordinated enough to hand-tune skis. The coarse and medium wheels will make some sparks. Due to the metal dust, it's a good idea to wear a respirator.
The sharpening gets a little tricky near the tips and tails due to the compound curves and lack of purchase for the guide bearings. It may be a good idea to sharpen these areas by hand. Or, maybe these areas don't need sharpening. My whole point in buying this was to save time.
To me, the last two photos both look pretty good. Clearly, the scratch patterns go in different directions. Accounting for that, I think the result from the Razor-Tune is actually finer. I suspect that the diagonal grind may cut into ice better than the parallel pattern.
At the moment, I'm a satisfied customer. It remains to be seen how much af a hassle the metal dust ends up being for indoor use. Also, we'll see if the noise wakes my kids at night. It's not super-loud, but it is an electric grinder after all.
