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Help!! Wax on Skins!


telemarker

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Question: are you talking about on the hair part or the sticky?

 

If it's in the hair, try scraping, smoothing, and spreading it over a large area of the skin. Helps prevent balling anyways.

 

If there's a whole mess of it, try laying a layer of grocery bag paper on the hair and gently ironing. The wax melts, the paper soaks it up.

 

If you talking about in the adhesive and it's preventing your skins from sticking, I'd guess regluing. Yuck.

 

Good luck.

dave

 

 

 

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Question: are you talking about on the hair part or the sticky?

 

If it's in the hair, try scraping, smoothing, and spreading it over a large area of the skin. Helps prevent balling anyways.

 

If there's a whole mess of it, try laying a layer of grocery bag paper on the hair and gently ironing. The wax melts, the paper soaks it up.

 

If you talking about in the adhesive and it's preventing your skins from sticking, I'd guess regluing. Yuck.

 

Good luck.

dave

 

 

 

Wax is stuck on the adhesive...

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Forgot to scrap and brush the cover wax off the skis? :whistle:

 

Use a sharp (plastic or metal)scraper or thin stiff putty knife to get as much of the wax off as you can. If needed, I would recommend a mild wax remover (Gel Clean is not as harsh as some) to get off the rest of the wax. If using remover make sure to get all of it off the skin and let it dry before glueing.

Probably have to do some spot reglueing - fun!

 

 

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Once you've scraped as much of the wax off as you can, simply pour boiling water over the area where the wax is, holding the skin at an angle(maybe lay it on a board and tip the skin to one side, not lengthwise) so that the hot water can carry the wax off, and you don't just simply spread the wax further down along the length of the skin. It'll probably take several pours before you get it all off. The idea is not to pour the water on while the skin is laying flat, but angled so the water just melts and carries off the wax on the surface, and not further into the fabric of the skin. Also, immediately after pouring the boiling water on, you might try scraping, it should come off pretty easily while it's still soft.

 

Now, this will probably also take off at least some of the adhesive, so as Tokogirl says you'll have some spot reglueing to do, but by this far along in the season that's usually a good idea anyway. I've used this method to remove wax from clothing, gloves, etc. and it hasn't, in my experience, caused any harm to the fabric.

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Have to admit I've never tried it on skins before, just used it many times on both natural and synthetic fabrics, including upholstery,climbing parkas, ski pants,gaiters, etc. with no adverse effects to the fabric or any interior waterproof/breathable coatings.

 

Mainly I've used it to remove really heavy,sticky wax like klister.Other waxes I've sometimes just left on or even rubbed right into the fabric, since,after all, it is just a climbing parka, etc., it's going to get dirty anyway, and a little wax is just more waterproofing. Not really an option with skins.

Since it's just water, there's no problem with solvents potentially degrading nylon based fabrics, or staining.

 

The method is predicated on holding the fabric (or skin in this case), at a steep enough angle to let the water run off very quickly so that the melted wax is carried off the surface. I use a teapot with a narrow pour spout to get just a small area at a time.I do think if you laid the skin down flat and poured boiling water on it, that yes, you'd probably take off a good bit, or most of the adhesive. As far as scraping is concerned, I usually only do that first to get the worst of it off, then use the boiling water.

Edited by Mtguide
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Teresa, What kind of skin wax would you recommend to avoid snow balling up and sticking to the hair side of the skins?

 

Hey there Kyle,

The key to preventing snow from balling up is to start by applying wax to the hair before you hit the trail. As you go along the skins absorb moisture and can freeze then it is harder to get the wax to stick to the hairs. This is especially true with older climbing skins.

Wax: Colder waxes tend to do better on the whole as it doesn't heat up as quickly with friction and get stripped off. I tend to use whatever is a small enough square to put in my pocket. Of course, I tend to have all Toko wax these days and use Red or the Fluoro blox mostly but I've used canning paraffin, Sex Wax (from surfing days), etc.. The only thing I haven't liked as much are spray on/liquid wax application to skins. You can either apply to much (not the best grip) or not enough (snowball effect) or it can accumilate on the glue side and prevent skin stickerage.

Sunday was a great example of fresh new fallen snow, high moisture content, and warming weather and variable snow. On Wedge that day I was very happy to have applied wax at the car. Perfect conditions for building your own snow stilts.

 

 

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Teresa, What kind of skin wax would you recommend to avoid snow balling up and sticking to the hair side of the skins?

 

Ascension makes glop-stopper wax, essentially a block of purple paraffin, however any paraffin (i.e. candle wax) will do. In college we use to melt candlewax into petri-dishes and let it dry into pucks that we brought along with us in our packs.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hey Sergei,

Yes those work great, especially partial to the Toko Gel Clean ;). However the skins and skin glue really don't like that noxious stuff close to them and it will tend to absorb into the climbing skin a bit to much and challenging to get all of it out. The old squeeze bottle gel clean works best but the spray (if your careful)should work to. Just use very sparingly and use a small paint brush.

Teresa

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Well, Mtguide was right: The boiling water treatment on the wax was very effective. And, it didn't take too much of the glue with it. I only needed to apply adhesive to a few spots. Other than that, thanks for the suggestion. It worked great. BTW, ironically I used one of those ear-wax removal, plastic bulbous deals that has a long, narrow snout. Made for more precise distribution of the boiling water.

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