Nordic Stone Grinding
Are your Nordic skis in need of a stone grind? We can help! Our team uses very specific techniques for servicing Nordic skis including our Wintersteiger RS 350. Learn more below. Or visit our ski service page for more details on service pricing.
The delicate nature of Nordic Skis has turned grinding their bases into an art form. The bases are very thin, and cannot take the grinding pressure from a normal stone grinder. The Start Haus has acquired the ultimate stone grinder for race skis. The Wintersteiger RS 350 is designed specifically for delicate finish work. This machine has more adjustment variables than any other stone grinder on the market. You can infinitely vary the speed of the stone, the speed of the feed wheel that sends the skis through the stone, and the pressure of the feed wheel. It can produce patterns that will work in any snow temperatures, humidity’s, and snow crystal shapes.
The RS 350 has preset patterns in a computer brain that were developed through years of testing by the OSV, (Austrian Ski Federation). By simply typing in the event you are skiing, the snow temperature, and the humidity, the RS 350 will pull up the best pattern for that condition. Patterns can also be pulled up or modified based on our own knowledge and testing in our own backyard. Once we develop a pattern that works, it is saved so that it can be repeated over and over again. These attributes might seem obvious as most machines can do this, but what follows it the difference between the RS 350 and all other stone grinders.
On most "old school” stone grinders, the entry and exit points at tip and tail of the ski, get worked very hard. When we get skis in our shop that have been stone ground previously by another shop, the tip and tail of the ski are already very thin. A key feature of the RS 350 is the pneumatic control of the feed arm and feed wheel that allows for the most precise entry and exit of the ski onto the stone. The benefit of this feature is that it will not hog off more material at the tip and tail then it does in the middle of the ski. Since retention of wax is relative to the thickness of the base, it is best to have as much base material available on the ski that you can.
The RS 350 has the most advanced filtering system for the cooling emulsion. Three filters insure that no stone residue, base material, or edge material, are ground back into your ski. By using this triple filter system for the emulsion, it guarantees that your grind will be smooth, clean, and precise.
As part of our Nordic grind program, we finish all the freshly ground skis in our Toko Thermo Bag. The Toko Bag is the fastest way to get a freshly ground ski up to speed. Each pair of Nordic skis are hot scraped with the softest hydrocarbon penetrating wax that we have found and finish coated with the same penetrating wax. The skis are then baked a minimum of 8 hrs in the Thermo Bag. When the Thermo cycle is complete, the skis are cooled, scraped, brushed out, and re-waxed with the hydrocarbon wax of your choice.