Want to cut 25 minutes off your Alley Loop time, or 35 minutes off your Grand Traverse time? Stack the odds in your favor by having your skis waxed in the Nordic Center’s New Toko Hotbox. ”Hotboxes are used to saturate your ski bases with wax. By using a temperature much lower than the melting point of the ski base, hotboxes are safer for your skis than using a wax iron for base saturation. And because the heat is applied for an extended period, skis absorb three times more wax than can be practically done with an iron.
Why do you want your bases saturated with wax? Besides conditioning your bases to a certain hardness and water repellency, wax also protects the base from oxidizing. An oxidized base does not absorb wax well, and a base without wax tends to be slow.” -Nordicskiracer.com
“It was very apparent how much faster my skis were after I hot boxed them…I was mentally able to ski faster than most of the Scheefer family, at least until they hotbox their skis.” -Mark Smiley
The four step process takes two days to complete:
1. Apply a thick coat of warmer fluorinated (expensive) wax, and without scraping, place in the hotbox for 8 hours.
2. Scrape and brush the ski, then apply a second coat of cold wax (ie- LF6 or LF4).
3. Place back in the hotbox for 4 hours, letting it cool slowly overnight.
4. Scrape and brush the wax out.
How much does all this cost you ask? Well for you, because it’s you, we are only charging a modest $49.00! In order to keep the Center “green” we will be hotboxing skis in batches. Drop your skis off during the week, and we will start the weekly batch on Wednesday at noon so your skis will be race ready by Friday morning at 9:00AM. If you need your skis done outside of this schedule, it will be an additional $8.00. We can also get your downhill skis racing faster using the same system, so bring in the entire quiver. Alpine skis are $55.00 due to the larger amount of expensive wax required.
