Lesson 6 : Getting ski ready or are you a sheep or eagle?

Please forgive my lack of coordination! I touched a wrong key thus that "mistake" of the previous class. It ended too quickly!

So you are wondering where is Pavel taking us today with that title?

What do sheep and eagles have to do with ski tuning?

I am sure you will like this class and the controversy it will create! I want to state right now that that is not my goal!
I what to make you a "thinking" ski tuners! I want you at all times, not just in this course question and think! I especially want the "younger" students to make this a practice as they learn! Ask why the earth is flat!!!!!

What I present is not "truth" or dogma but my way to tune skis. You can accept or reject the "suggestions"

Class Goal: Instill positive critical thinking in the context of ski tuning ( and perhaps life)!


I presume you have cleaned skis, checked edges and identified problem areas. Later we will take each zone and discuss how to repair base area and edges.

In this class we will look at some ski tuning practices. More specifically the base ski edge bevel angle! For the students in class you will get an illustration from me!


But first a little history!

Modern ski tuning derives much of its techniques and procedures from ski racing. Numerous ski champions acknowledge that they won because of the ski prep done!
Remember the goals of ski race prep is to shave off seconds. To make ski faster at all cost!

When a racer begins to win consistently others start to look why he/she is doing so! Is it the training in the Summer? Is it the coach and his staff? Is it the new skis?
Perhaps the ski tuning practices or products!

Very soon "others" will note that the winning skier's tuner is using a brush made from Tibeten horse hairs ! We all know that Tibet has very cold climate and those hairs are thicker and thus brush across the waxed ski base at 38.5 degrees! This is exactly the degrees of the snowflake's arms!
You get the point! That is why most of the top ski tuners do their magic in locked rooms. My point is tuning practices are passed along because they "seem" to work!

An bright ski engineer calculated the friction index of Ptex as compared to steel used in ski edges! Imagine there was a very very small difference!
But races are won with small difference, so if you examine carefully a true World Cup ski ( I mean a real WC ski) not one with bright big graphics saying World Cup on top skin, you will note that the steel edges at the base are narrower! Thinner!
In theory less metal means less seconds.

Then some other bright soul (perhaps an engineer) though,,,,hummmmm if I "raise" that area near steel edges, that means that when the skis are running "flat" they will just be on fast Ptex rather than on Ptex and steel. So it was done! The secret was out!

Now if you read tuning booklets or visit ski sites you will read, "tune base edge at .5 or 1 degree to make ski turn better". Do not believe me, check this yourself!

I am a silly man! I ask question to ski companies, wax companies to determine where and how this practice began! All tuning gurus pass along this myth! Just visit more technical ski sites where hours are spent on angles, temperatures and hot boxes! I have not got an acceptable answer yet!

So I did a double blind test. Double blind means I did not know and the skiers did not know which skis were beveled! Guess what the results were for 200 skiers ( 50 of them top level racers)!

Now before you begin to write that email telling me what a negative self centered etc.... person I am consider this!

I will give anyone $500 who presents an acceptable field study indicating that beveled .5, 1 or 2 degree ski turns better!
I do not mean some ski company man, or some booklet from this or that wax company ( I have them). Nor do I accept some ski racer saying he/she won a race because of beveled edges.


I know I will win the bet because of one thing; the Hawthorne Effect!

So take out your Google search!

So take out the base bevel in your tuning!

You see now why you will be great tuners,,,because you think and ask questions!

Do not believe me! Search yourself, that $500 is a great motivator! The best reward however will be that you will become an eagle ,,not a sheep !