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 is probably all over the media channels by now, but it needs to be showcased one more time. If you haven’t seen it take the time to watch it, its bound to make an impression.
So far this season Under Armour has been putting out its ‘Along The Way’ series which give a little interview/behind the scenes look at their athletes. I’d have to say that these are some of the best pieces that I’ve seen put together and can’t be more impressed by Michael Clark handling the filming/editing. All you need to do is watch to see what I’m talking about.
Were out on vacation, and will be back no later than Sunday January 2, 2011. You can still email us, and order product, but they wont be shipped until Monday January 3, 2011. Also, we will try to answer emails as quick as possible, but that is dependent on getting an internet connection.
Have a great New Year, and we’ll see you in 2011!
OCEAN
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
So, its been forever since the last post. I was really going to try to stay out of the summer lull and keep it updated, but as summer was closing out and just so much left to do before everyone had to get back at it the blog kind of went by the wayside for a little bit. However, while some may have been worried as no news was coming from this end I’m here to tell you thats not the case. I’ve been working pretty hard, and theres some cool stuff that I’m planning on this winter that I’m really excited about. 1, 2, 3…
1. Had a great time producing the wax again this year. I remember the first time doing it in 2009 and not being sure what the outcome would be. The process took me off and on throughout the end of July and August to get all the bars made. I thought that by adding more volume to the melting process things would speed up a little bit, but since I didn’t add anymore molds it actually worked against me a little bit. One thing I would like to show is after I switched a little bit of the formula up to give more structure to the wax, the result was this really cool ‘Tortoise Shell’ texture that appeared when the wax cooled.
2. I have been talking with a few shops about selling the wax this winter, and they all seem excited about it. Nothing is final yet as they want to test the wax out first, and I wouldn’t expect anything less of them. I for sure wouldn’t sell/endorse anything I hadn’t had any previous experience with. More news on this will be updated as it happens. Hopefully we can get it into all your favorite shops. What we look for is boutique shops that have a culture about them thats unique to each of their locations.
3. I’m looking to start of the Ocean team this season. I haven’t spoken with anyone yet, but we have a couple guys in mind, that I would be so happy to have on the team. More will be brought up on this as it comes.
4. I updated the web store and we’ll now have Discount Codes this season, so look out for those and when we drop them. Some will be put out in the open, and others may need to be searched for somewhat. Better codes will go to those who take the time to look. Also, in the next few weeks were going to start running an add or two on NewSchoolers.
