So, you purchased a new pair of skis or picked up a pair of freshly stone ground skis from the service shop. What is the best waxing practice for getting your skis ready for the season?

Before Waxing

Before you begin check your new ski bases for flatness. They should be flat if they have been recently stone ground.  Correct your bases if they’re not flat or if you want a different base bevel. The best course of action is to get them stone ground and have the machine set your base and edge bevels according to your preference. Then, set up your sidewalls.

The concept of waxing a new ski or a freshly stone ground ski is the same because they both need wax penetrated into the base.

Consequently, the first step is wax penetration. It is best to have plenty of wax deep in the pores of the base material. Then the second step is to harden the base. 

There are some products out there called base prep waxes. Toko used to make a base prep wax too. These waxes might be suitable for working on your skis in general, much like our base Toko Performance Red and Blue waxes depending on the climate you ski in. However, they are not suitable for working on brand-new skis. The issue is that they are neither soft enough to achieve deep wax penetration nor hard enough to harden the base. So, they don’t do either important step well compared to what is being recommended in this article.

Step One: Penetrate with Toko Yellow

For the first step, which is penetration, my recommendation would be to use a wax called Toko Cleaning Wax (yellow in color). This wax used to be called cleaning and hot box wax. Toko Cleaning Wax has an extremely low melting point and is super soft. The lower the melting point of the wax, the softer it is. The softness allows the wax to penetrate the ski more deeply and at a higher percentage when hot waxing (given a fixed temperature compared to other waxes).

Since penetration is the goal of this first step, use Toko Cleaning Wax. Apply three to five layers. People often like a straightforward, one-step formula: “Do this and then it’s done.” However, I prefer to see how the ski reacts after the first layer. Based on how much wax my skis accept, I can get a feel for the condition of the base. Notably, skis accept wax best after receiving a quality stone grind. The bases should be drinking the wax in.

Potential challenges

Some new skis are freshly ground and some have been sitting in a warehouse or on the retail floor for over a year, they won’t accept wax as well as a freshly ground ski. One way to tell the difference is to determine how the skis accept the wax. You should see some bubbles in the wax. If the skis absorb the wax in such a way that it disappears into the base, it is then necessary to add wax during your first hot wax cycle. That’s a good sign.

After the wax has been well heated into the base, you can let it cool completely and then heat it in again. Allow the wax to completely cool, scrape and thoroughly copper-brush the ski. This process is good for new or freshly ground bases as it opens things up, making them better at accepting wax. Then apply additional super soft Toko Cleaning Wax and complete the entire process another two times. At this point, the penetration step should be finished. 

It is always important to let a ski cool to room temperature before scraping. It is too easy to scrape into the base material if you scrape warm skis. 20 minutes is a good rule of thumb.

Step Two: Saturate with Blue

Now, your skis are saturated with wax. After letting them cool, scrape and copper-brush the wax out completely. Then hot wax with Toko Base Performance Blue. This is a fairly hard hot wax that will effectively harden your base while still being fairly easy to work with.

After ironing the blue into your base, the ski effectively has a mixture of yellow and blue in the base. This is because yellow wax now exists in the pores of the base due to your initial penetration cycles. Again allow the skis to cool completely, and scrape and copper-brush them thoroughly. Then hot wax again with the Toko Base Performance Blue. You displace the yellow by applying blue hot wax, letting it cool, and then scraping and brushing the base.

For this reason, the process is accomplished in two to three cycles of waxing, scraping, and brushings of the blue hot wax. The yellow that was already in the base is, in a microscopic way, holding the base open. This enables the blue hot wax to go far deeper into the base than it would have without the yellow. Therefore, only using blue wax has been determined not to be the best practice.

Step 3: Wax Ski and Repeat

This hardening step is very important because if you go out in December on dry cold snow, it will rip all that wax out of your base and abrade it in no time. So, you need to both penetrate and harden the base. After completing two to three cycles of the blue wax, scraping, and brushing, apply the wax of the day and go skiing.

This is the third step of the process: wax and ski. When you return from skiing, brush your skis thoroughly with a copper-brush, then wax with the appropriate wax of the day (probably base performance blue or red), let it cool completely, then scrape and brush it. If you do this every time you ski, there will be a dramatic improvement in the performance of your skis. You will also see a positive effect on your bases’ condition and gliding properties.

So, there is no single wax that will do this. In terms of the penetration and hardening steps, go with Toko Cleaning Wax, Toko Base Performance Blue hot wax, and finally wax and ski. You will watch your skis get better and better. Good luck!

Enter here to win a Toko T18 Digital Waxing Iron, $440 Value