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The Waxes They Are a Changin'
- Thread starter RaceWax.com
- Start date
Dominator already made a move. I'm sure it's limited right now. They call it the FFC line. Fluoro Free Competition.
That's easy. You come up with another chemical with an unknown environmental impact when used as part of a ski wax, figure out how to integrate it with normal wax chemistry, and start making waxes that use it.
I do worry about eliminating fluoro creating a new arms race and pushing wax companies to use more-novel chemical additives that lack adequate study to know whether or not they may have a cumulative impact in places with a lot of ski racers.
I'm really curious as to what happens to fluoro pricing towards the end of this season. I'd expect most (all?) NGBs to adopt the FIS regulation, meaning that fluoros would only be legal for non-sanctioned events (although I don't know that lower-level events are likely to be testing anytime soon).
Flouros -- the new steroids.
As a skate skier, I am sensitive to wax. On my first day out, last Sunday, I was definitely having a "good wax day" (even though it was also a "bad fitness day"). It's a great feeling. Of course I have had this experience with HC waxes plenty of times. But in all honesty it's happened more often with LFs, here by the sea where I live. (I've never had HFs in the budget, so have very little experience skiing on them.) So it was on Sunday. I'd be thrilled if they figured out a way to make faster wax out of sunflower stalks or whatever.
After watching the recent WC race from Killington on TV, I came to realize that the problem is not the wax on our skis. It is the excess wax that is scraped off by the service techs in the start arena. I saw one tech scraping a good 2mm thickness of wax off a ski onto the snow. Maybe they should use the fiberlene method? That's a lot of waste IMO.
Karl
Karl
I brought this up in regard to a study that had been done in a big nordic center and checked for fluoro content in local critters. It actually amazes me that it's still considered an acceptable practice to scrape outdoors and let wax fall where it may or take a tarp covered with wax scrapings outside and just shake it out, when we wouldn't do that with many other substances these days. To a lesser degree, the same is true if applying an overlay and/or brushing at the start; by definition, you're trying to remove wax from the ski and leaving it in the environment. I doubt there's much real impact from doing a final brush, especially with hydrocarbon waxes (the solution to pollution is dilution, after all), but I can see how cumulative effects could have an impact.
I'm a bit surprised that World Cup techs are scraping that thick a layer at the start, though. It's a heck of a lot easier to scrape and brush and get good results in a warm room on a bench than it is at the start (even with a portable bench, which I'd assume they were using). Anyone care to comment on why they'd choose to wait and do final prep in an outdoor environment? Structure protection getting the skis to the top? Time constraints?
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A friend who was a WC tech says that if you brush when the ski is cold the structure or pores will have tightened up and squeezed out more wax.
...and, in rec/sportif nordic world, it is very much a thing to show up at an event and have a tech in a temporary tent do your skis with the WoD instead of doing it beforehand.
