Little help from my tuner PMTS friends

[John Mason]

My holiday present is going to be tunning and waxing stuff for my skis. I have the 1100xrc sw's, head 6 stars, I 75 Ms. What base and side angles should I go with?

I had heard that the 1100xrc sw's are at 0 on the base. But a 0 base angle is nearly impossible to self tune as you would have to grind the base up to get a 0 angle.

I checked out the Head site for recommendations on this and they just have the range and leave it to the user.

Thanks! (It's snowing at Holiday Valley today - so maybe the eastern portion of my ski break will work out after all) (Piggyslayer - we got an extra bed if you want to come up from NJ to ski at Holiday Valley - 13 dollar lift tickets)

[jclayton]

John ,
I tune all our skis at 1? base and 2? side , that way I keep my tools set permanently and don't forget when going from ski to ski . I think this is almost an industry standard for recreation . YOu have to watch you don't take away some of the base though , a base grind would be needed every 3 or 4( or 5 ) times you file it . Some people stay away from the bases as long as possible to avoid this . The difficulty is in early season snow when it's tempting to go off piste when there is not so much cover .

[piggyslayer]

I got SKIVISIONS BASE FLATTENER & STRUCTURE TOOl from tognar.com
and have by hand flattened my bases.
I did it over summer and it took a lot of time and effort.
I would suggest doing the first base flattening job in a store and maybe just maintaining by hand if you want to. This way you should be able to maintain the O degs.

This was really very time consuming to do it by hand and I hope I have not messed up much.
If you going for .5 deg the beast guides sold by tognar.com really helped me in going a good job with a file.
I have applied .5 base bevel on all my skis.

I noticed that both Head skis I and my wife have were very convex.
My Atomic SL11 have actually been concave and last season I skied on effectively negative base bevel angle! and it was fun!

John, thanks for the invite, I would love to, but in less than 2 weeks I will be out for a week skiing Utah (knock, knock, knock) and I just can't get away now. So far, East was yucky and we did not go skiing (on white snow) yet.

I hope I will catch up with you some day, maybe Montana camp?

Robert

[Harrison]

.5? base and 1.5-2? side...can't go wrong

[BigE]

.5? base and 1.5-2? side...can't go wrong

Be careful, Atomic ships from the factory with 3 degree side.

[John Mason]

Now I'm researching which tools to get. Now that's a whole other question. Beast looks like they got a nice package put together, even includes the vises.

This place has the beast tools pretty low-cost:

http://www.drzags.com/thebeast.htm

This is the home of the beast - as a bundle they are competitive with their own products discounted by others:

http://www.ski-racing.com/packages.html

That elite kit looks like everything I would need to get started. Ott, what do you think? Should I get the 99 dollar kit instead?

(Holiday Valley is opening tomorrow. They got 8 inches the last two days, snow forcasted most every day for the next week. Ott, you coming?)

[John Mason]

Thanks for the info BigE. The Short Atomic I loan out when I'm teaching family members or friends to ski isn't my focus. It's really too short for what I like. But I suppose I'll have to keep that one tuned up too. The other Atomic I had walked away while I was at copper. Now that one I would have cared about.

So, if I did have an Atomic I was using, would it be best to retain the 3 degree bevel? Or should it be knocked down to lower bevelings people are recommending? Theoretically speaking.

[BigE]

IMO, if 2 degrees was better it would come at 2 degrees.

[Ken]

Here's some edge bevel info:
http://www.tognar.com/edge_tips_file_be ... board.html

I like buying from Tognar or Arstech.com


Ken

[John Mason]

Thanks for that tip ken. That's a great link.

They even go into how some people will vary the bevel along the length of the ski for certain purposes.