Really great look behind the scenes, and at the history of the famous Nixon Jibfest. I remember seeing the video of the original one back in 2002, had that on repeat for a long time. The energy in gatherings like this is truly immense.
With the days starting to get shorter, and while it’s still hot out here is a fun project to get you going and your ski’s ready for the first day this winter. Anyone who has waxed their own ski’s before know what’s going on here, but might not have added these couple steps. With the point of waxing to get the wax deep in the pores of the ski base, hot boxing gets you that much further. A Hot Box is an expensive piece of equipment that is a staple of any high end wax house. Its purpose is after you finish ironing on your wax, you put the ski’s in the hotbox which heats the entire ski, opening up the pores even more so more wax penetrates.
Enough technical stuff, heres how to do it at your house without the expensive equipment; you just need a sunny day:
1. Unless you’ve been lucky enough to head to a summer camp, or the souther hemisphere this summer your ski’s have probably been sitting around since your final day out last winter. If you got it, the best thing to do first is to get a few passes with a Nylon Brush. This will clear out the grooves of any debris or old wax that is still in there. Next if you have a Bronze Brush that will clean them up even more.
2. Now take a paper towel and wipe off any of the stuff that you just cleaned out of the bases.
3. What we like to do before we take the iron to the base is to grab the bar of wax and crayon it onto the base. You won’t get a lot on, but you will be able to see when you get the whole surface covered.
4. Here’s the pretty standard steps for waxing after this: 4.1: Heat the iron up. 4.2: Drip the wax onto the base. 4.3: Iron the wax into the base.
5. Now heres the fun part. Instead of letting the wax cool and going straight to scraping the excess wax off take your skis outside and lay them down in the sun. The heat from the sun, and the atmospheric pressure is enough to emulate the same thing that happens inside a hotbox. It will take a little longer, but leave them out for an hour or so and they will be all set. You’ll even be able to see it happening, a little like watching paint dry, but after 15 or 20 minutes the wax will become liquid once again on the base and will begin seeping deeper into the base of the ski.
6. After an hour your ski’s should be good. However I noticed that a lighter base will take a bit longer as they reflect light rather than absorb it. Now if we were going skiing in the next day or so we would let the wax cool off and now scrape. But since instead of a couple days, we have a couple months to wait; we’ll just leave the excess wax on the base of the ski and scrape the wax off before we go out for the first time this season.
Hope everyone likes this, and has the time to try it out.
This promotion lasts through November 29, 2010 at midnight, so get on it before its gone. This will be the steepest discount we have all season.
Got an awesome heads up from our friends over at Freshborn Market who gave us some love with a little write up about what we are doing. This is our biggest piece of ‘press’, so I’m very excited about it, and I hope to see more of this come about. Check out the post Here.
Freshborn, in my words: Detailing an eclectic group of products, Freshborn comes off with a well defined aesthetic of simple style, developed character.
In other words though, if you want to the point, opinionated looks at unique products, check them out, theyre awesome. www.FreshBornMarket.com
Just wanted to share, and highlight this series that Eero Ettala put together last year. Really enjoyed watching all of these, this is my kinda of ‘movie’, more of a backstory going along with why things are being done the way they are, and how they go about doing them. Sit back and enjoy some of the greatest snowboarding.
EP.1EP.2EP.3EP.4EP.5EP.6
In the spirit of Halloween, were putting out our first Discount Code, for 15% off any purchase within our Store. Once you are ready to checkout, enter the promo code: HALLOWEEN and the discounts should be reflected in the cart. Also, first 5 orders will get a free sticker pack. Were not sure how long this code is going to last, so be quick! This is great for all those that have already been able to get out and ski, and also for those who still have a few weeks to go and need to tune up their gear before the snow starts to really fall.
Go Here > Pick Products > Go to Cart > Enter: HALLOWEEN > Get 15% Off
A week ago, July 20th, meant that we have been in business for 1 year. So far I have had an amazing time ever since the beginning, and I cannot see it stopping anytime. I would like to thank those people who have made it possible for us to continue on into another year. It is awesome to see that people are willing to put their trust in us, and our product. It is a conscience decision that some have made to be more aware of the products they buy and the habits that they have, and we are happy that we can offer a product that they can use. The call to action of this post will be that for those who have already gotten on board with the Ocean lifestyle is to spread the word so that our following can grow into a much greater movement than it already is. For everything, Thank you and lets shred this winter!
Help us out by:
Joining the Mailing List (On the Right)
This year I’m going to give a few behind the scenes looks as to what goes into making the wax. Here is how the bags are made that the wax comes in. It’s pretty self explanatory, so just follow along.
Step 1.
Step 2.
Step 3.
Step 4. 
Step5. 
There you have it, 10.11 Ocean bags all pressed and ready to go. Next little look into what we do, will be about the wax, I’m just waiting for a solid block of time to devote to it.
Biggest news as of late for Ocean products is having them now be stocked at People Skate & Snowboard, some Warm Temp wax is on the shelf for those who are going out west to enjoy some summer time shred at either Hood or Whistler. If your from around town go check out the shop, great people and a awesome vibe throughout the store. 3375 Orchard Lake Road Keego Harbor, MI 48320
Look for a full line up stocked this winter!
We did a giveaway on NewSchooler’s last weekend and oh man was it hectic. It was awesome because every post, email or PM that we got were full of positive comments. It tells us that as hard as we are trying, we must be doing at least one thing right, and we are extremely happy about that. It exciting for us because it is a chance for us to get our wax out there to so many more people that we thought possible in just our first year. Let me tell you, we got soo many requests for a sample that in less than 30 minutes we ran out of our original stock. I thought that it would take maybe the whole night to get rid of what we had. But even after that we had to end the giveaway after less than 2 hours since it began because we had requests that tripled what we first planned on giving out.
We spend the next two days working constantly to catch up so that we could get all the wax out as soon as we could. Monday night was dedicated fully to producing more samples to send out to all the people that made it in under the time cut. Tuesday was spent filling envelopes and getting everything stamped. A lifesaver for us was learning that you can use your printer to print the return and address on a letter. I wasn’t looking forward to filling out all of those envelopes and thankfully I didn’t have to.
A little bit of a disclaimer to anyone who sent us a request within the time limit – We put the waxes in envelopes which I’ve been told shouldn’t be a problem for the usps but, they have added some new regulations that we made sure that we complied with but incase some of them come back to us we will be sure to get them back out to you as soon as possible.
Also, thanks to RIME*knits and all of their great comments that they sent our way!
…WesJones
