Gear West Ski Services

Ski Service Order Form

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Stone Grinding: Montana Crystal SR

Gear West has been grinding nordic skis for over 15 years. We recently invested in a top of the line stone grinder, a new Montana Crystal SR. The SR is the most advanced grinding machine available and is custom tailored from Montana for use on Nordic skis only. The Montana employs two XC specific stones and variable controlled stone speed, pneumatic down pressure and dressing tool advancement. This technology allows perfect grind reproducibility as the stone wears and offers a large number of possible grind structures.

Most all top level racers utilize stonegrinding as a means to faster skis. There are a few reasons why a ski needs to be ground including…

• Refresh the base and open the pores of a ski base. P-tex can become sealed from the waxing iron overheating the ski base. P-tex can also become sealed from using too many cold waxes without using any softer paraffin's in between waxing. For a performance racer it is almost impossible to use a race ski for an entire season without some amount of the ski base seal.
• Create a specific base structure for a given snow type and temperature.
• Remove surface scratches.
• Flatten a ski base that may be concave, convex or wavy.

View Grind Menu

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Hot Box: Swix T007680 Hot Box

Gear West owns a Swix Hot Box with a microprocessor temperate controlled forced Air heating unit. After plenty of testing we now have a formula that improves the ski base and dramatically accelerates the process of getting your new and newly stone-ground skis race-ready.
Hot boxing skis allows for greater saturation of wax into the ski base than ironing alone. Hot boxing has been utilized by world cup race service teams for years and allows for skis to be fully saturated without applying repeated layers of wax.
Gear West offers 3 Hot Box options for saturation of your skis.

1. Basic: Standard 3 hour base treatment with very soft paraffin. New and newly stone ground skis will still need to be hardened with a colder wax to achieve maximum base speed.
2. Basic + Moly: Standard 3 hour saturation with finished with molybdenum. Moly has a unique ability to repel dirt and condition base material. Another benefit of moly is that additional layers of wax seem to hold to it very well making it a great base/anchor wax.
3. World Cup: Extended 12 hour base saturation with soft paraffin and finished with a colder wax to harden the bases. World Cup servicemen are using extended periods of Hot Box time to fully saturate ski bases for optimal race speeds. This treatment, while great at bringing skis up to full speed, may hasten the normal movement of bases away from exact flatness.