Removing kick wax from kicker skin glue

[CwmRaider]

Success!
First I tried the hot water trick, but water up to near boiling temperatures did not cause the kick wax to really separate from the glue. Perhaps with softer kick wax it may have worked, but it did not solve my problem.

However, @Shenanagains suggestion to use solid paper (brown paper) did the trick!
I had a roll of thick-ish brown paper, laid it over the contaminated skin glue, set my iron to 80 degrees C, did a couple of passes while keeping motion, and observed the wax permeating the paper while the glue stayed put when pulling off the wax! Woohoo! I repeated the process 2-3 times per skin with new paper, until I could no longer observe the wax darkening the paper, and now they seem to stick as well as when they were new!

Awesome!
Thanks all

[Stephen]

Really good to know.
I would have expected the paper to stick to the skins.
Was the paper of a particular high quality? Maybe something like butcher paper?
Would cheap craft paper work as successfully?
I guess the real question is: Does the kind of paper matter?

I don’t need this information now, but this is the sort of thing that’s good to know beforehand.

[CwmRaider]

The paper i used is pretty stiff and thick paper, it is used as masking material in construction projects.
From my limited experience of exactly one successfully repeated experiment, I would say that the skin adhered to the paper similarly as it should adhere to the ski base when I pulled it off. It should not be glossy paper or it wont absorb wax. The brown color was useful as the paper became darker shade of brown (through and through) as the wax percolated in, so I knew that something was still being removed from the glue. And it should be thick enough to not disintegrate when you pull it off.
I suppose that the glue not adhering excessively to the paper is also a question of not heating it too much; IE the glue should not liquefy.

I had nothing to lose, as if this would have failed I would have hot scraped the glue and any remaining contaminant off to reglue the skins from scratch. So it was a bit of a leap of faith but it worked flawlessly.

[Nick BC]

I use paper bags from the supermarket or liquor store to remove glue. Tear them into strips.

[montrealer]

I used the boiling water trick to get some small spots of Swix blue off my asnes kicker skins. It worked well and after drying the skins seem back to normal.

Anyone have tips on reducing the amount of wax that gets stuck to the skins in the first place? I notice there were very small spots (like a mm or so) of wax on the adhesive when I pulled them off. I figure scraping and corking to make the wax surface more uniform would help?

[fgd135]

I used the boiling water trick to get some small spots of Swix blue off my asnes kicker skins. It worked well and after drying the skins seem back to normal.

Anyone have tips on reducing the amount of wax that gets stuck to the skins in the first place? I notice there were very small spots (like a mm or so) of wax on the adhesive when I pulled them off. I figure scraping and corking to make the wax surface more uniform would help?

Yes, always attempt to remove as much kick wax as possible before using adhesive skins. A well-sharpened steel scraper and a synthetic cork really help.

[CwmRaider]

After some recently changing conditions and me forgetting to re-wax my skis, I ended up sticking a pair of skins on Swix Violet Extra and pulling off quite a bit of wax again with the skins. For the record the skins still adhered enough to clean skis to be functional after this mistake, I guess repeat sticking and unsticking from the Swix Violet would have been more problematic.
I had no kraft paper lying around this time, but a few sheets of standard printer-type blank paper worked just as well.
i) Set waxing iron to 80 degrees
ii) lay skins with the contaminated glue facing upwards on a clean surface
iii) stick paper on contaminated glue
iv) Make a quick-ish pass with the iron over the paper, observe spots where wax penetrates paper
v) let cool a bit
vi) pull paper off gently while glue remains on skin.
vii) repeat to see if more wax absorbs into paper.

This takes about 10 minutes for a pair of skins. Easy. Thanks again @Shenanagains