A picture sometimes asks a thousand questions...


Like: what the heck is going on here?! This is a picture of a DH ski hot-boxed last night.  Both skis have thousands of bubbles on them. WHY?! They weren't there when I put the skis in the box...

I have an idea: These bubbles prove the DEEP WAXING theory of hotboxing. They show entrapped air- which I believe escaped from the pores of the base. Why are the bubbles visible? Because I run my hotbox at an unconventionally low temperature... therefore the wax was semi-solid, not liquid. If liquid, these bubbles would have popped.

I think I will continue the experiment for a couple more cycles...

2nd pass, 2 degrees hotter:


Only 2 degrees hotter, now 99% of bubbles are gone... but there are now a few craters where some bubbles were.  "Better" me thinks, but I also think the skis need a couple more cycles until they aren't absorbing any more wax...

Also: on pass 3 and 4 through the hotbox, I have been trying something I call "reverse hot boxing." Ray from Alpine Ski Tuning postulated that the warm wax was actually trapping some hot air in the ski, which made saturation more difficult. I decided to try prepping the ski completely, then throwing it in the box for an hour before waxing, then returning to the box. The results are quite good. I have NOT yet proven whether more or less wax is actually being absorbed, as I will only be able to do that be waxing 2 identical skis by both methods and weighing them after the experiment... but I WILL get to that at some point.