Wax hotbox

[Doug Briggs]

...

If anybody wants to do this, My advice would be to use a heat source that "works". As even a temp as possible, throughout the box.

If you are going to build a hot box the heat source has to be indirect. Blow air of the desired (right) temp over the skis, don't expose the skis to the heat source itself.

Thanks for the feedback on the scotch brite. I'll just have Scotch. ;-)

 

[Jacques]

If you are going to build a hot box the heat source has to be indirect. Blow air of the desired (right) temp over the skis, don't expose the skis to the heat source itself.

I agree. That's how mine works.
I think all the negative comments on boxing scared the OP away.

Again, I have pairs I probably cooked to death. They all still have camber, and ski just fine. Plenty of rebound. From foam cores to wood with one and two layers of titanal.
Could it be that some folks just totally "F"-ed up their designs? Could it be some skis were poorly constructed? IDK
A car sitting in sun on a hot day can reach 150F. Hey some folks leave skis in there!
My understanding was 158F should be the limit in a box, but I have never gone that high. No need.
If a ski takes a dump at 140F it must be a real crappy ski.

 

[Dakine]

I expect that hand laid race skis use epoxy with a lower glass transition temperature than production skis.
You can probably cook the hell out of a pair of rental beaters without noticing a difference in their (shitty) performance.
Really high end skis probably use a resin system optimized for resilience at skiing temperatures and they literally melt in the sun.
Epoxy is not just epoxy and there are lots of additives that are used to optimize performance in different applications.

 

[Primoz]

Could it be that some folks just totally "F"-ed up their designs? Could it be some skis were poorly constructed? IDK
A car sitting in sun on a hot day can reach 150F. Hey some folks leave skis in there!

Hotboxes I used, and hotboxes most (well every single one) of guys I know used were not homemade, but few 1000eur worth, at that time, sort of state of art pieces designed and produced by companies who knew thing or two about these things. So I doubt it was fucked up design. Poorly constructed skis? Well maybe, but every single ski I was talking about were in range, that noone here even saw, even less laid hands on them. They were not low end race skis, even less low end store skis, but skis for companies best WC racers, so more or less first picks out of race service production. This of course doesn't exclude that they could be poorly constructed, but chances for that I relatively low, I would say. And none of the skis I was talking about is ever left in car sitting on sun for hours, especially not in summer
I said that before, and I will say that again. I'm sure your skis are still just fine, and you think they still just fine, but I was talking about race skis, where changing flex pattern for 10% actually renders ski unusable, while for most (all) recreational skiers, this change wouldn't be noticeable. I'm talking about skis, where 0.01sec can make difference between winning race or ending as loser.
As for OP and if someone scared him away or not... Even today, when I'm not in WC business anymore, at least not as serviceman, I wouldn't use hotbox. As someone mentioned, waxing is sort of therapeutic thing. You go to basement, spend half hour or hour taking care of skis, and day is much nicer on the end And I doubt anyone needs to prepare 10 pairs of skis daily for him/her and/or his family. Preparing 2 or 4 pairs of skis for tomorrow's recreational day out on snow is done so fast, that hotbox doesn't bring any advantage (it takes way longer with hotbox to do this then with iron).

 

[Dakine]

To me, ski prep is a meditation and a reason to drink.
Working in my nice warm shop while watching it snow and getting my skis just right is a high.
Add a little fine wine or bourbon and pair it with some good Sativa, you too can feel the Zen of ski prep.
I may be too old to ski fast and take chances but fast skis are still a thrill.

 

[Jeff_team FAST]

That was an awesome discussion and I feel like I learned a lot

So the gist of the discussion fits what I was suspecting. I e been skiing / racing / coaching for about 35 years and hadn’t heard about hot boxes until recently and then only on the internet. I figured it might be an ok technique but not critical otherwise I think I would have heard about it before.

I think I’m mainly excited about the upcoming season and I think projects like this are fun to plan (and sometimes even build).

Think I’m going to stick with my wax / cool / wax... repeat. It’s sort of like tuning edges by hand vs a machine. I tried the razor tune, but overall found the time savings wasn’t worth the results (and risk). So now I use files and stones and the device sits unused in my toolbox. Feel like a hotbox will be the same and just take up lots of space in my garage. (Btw, razor tune works great and delivers great results, just wasn’t for me)

Thanks again for the thoughtful responses.