Kick Skins over Kick Wax

[greatgt]

Have used green, blue, extra blue, pink, and red this year and it works well....Kicker skin didn't hold up as the plastic piece that holds the skins in that hole in the ski ripped out....Mountain Opps take care of my equipment so not worried....But surprised they came apart from pressure....TM

[Genoah77]

It's been weirdly warm here, so I've been using red/silver quite often...I was nervous about putting skins over top based on this post, even after I scraped the wax off (since there is often still some wax residue).

I can now confirm that you can first scrape red/silver off the base in the field thoroughly before putting a skin on. I checked the skin glue afterwards on two different pairs of skis, and both were fine.

[rickjamesbrown]

Somewhat related question - is it a bad idea to leave kick skins on a ski when you store them off season? Or even for shorter periods like a week or two? It seems to me like the ski would be equivalent to the backing that came with the skin. I’m new to ski skins and can’t find much info on it.

[Stephen]

I don’t know the answer to this, so should probably not say anything, but that doesn’t seem to be stopping me...

I would think that leaving the skins on a COMPLETELY clean ski base would be a great way to store skins.
However, it would be a bad way to store skis (since the ski bases should have wax on them for long-term storage).

Once there is wax on the ski, I would be concerned about any petrochemicals in the wax interacting with the skin glue during long-term storage, and no telling what would happen. If a problem, the ski bases could probably be cleaned up / re-conditioned ok, but the skin glue may be compromised, and need re-gluing.

Would be interested to know if there is reliable information on this.

[Ptarmigan]

Somewhat related question - is it a bad idea to leave kick skins on a ski when you store them off season? Or even for shorter periods like a week or two? It seems to me like the ski would be equivalent to the backing that came with the skin. I’m new to ski skins and can’t find much info on it.

I have some accidental experience with this.

Recently, I went to take our skins off when we got back to the car after a tour. It was very cold and when I started pulling a skin off, I noticed some wax was coming off with it. (We had two layers of swix green over regular blue as snow had been sticking to our bases with just blue. Since they were cold waxes, I hadn't scraped them off before putting on the skins). I didn't like that, so I figured I would take the skins off at home instead. Maybe, I guessed, the wax wouldn't come off with the skin when the skis were warmer.

Of course, once we got home, we unloaded our gear and I completely forgot to peel the skins off our skis. They sat for a week before I noticed. When I did peel them off, no wax came up, but the skins had left a thin film of skin glue behind on our bases. It wasn't anything major and came off easily with a scraper (along with the kick wax underneath). However, I doubt it was great for the skins. Fortunately, they are still sticky and I don't notice any problems with them adhering to my skis. However, it is not something I would want to do again.

[Stephen]

Somewhat related question - is it a bad idea to leave kick skins on a ski when you store them off season? Or even for shorter periods like a week or two? It seems to me like the ski would be equivalent to the backing that came with the skin. I’m new to ski skins and can’t find much info on it.

...
Of course, once we got home, we unloaded our gear and I completely forgot to peel the skins off our skis. They sat for a week before I noticed. When I did peel them off, no wax came up, but the skins had left a thin film of skin glue behind on our bases. It wasn't anything major and came off easily with a scraper (along with the kick wax underneath). However, I doubt it was great for the skins. Fortunately, they are still sticky and I don't notice any problems with them adhering to my skis. However, it is not something I would want to do again.

The same thing happened to me recently. I wasn’t sure if the skins left glue on the ski, or if the feel of the wax had changed from being under the skins. In other words, I’m still not sure if skin glue was actually left on top of the wax, or not.
I’m thinking that it’s unlikely the skin glue would “melt” and stay on the ski, so maybe the consistency of the wax had changed to feel more tacky, but am not certain, one way or the other.

[rickjamesbrown]

Well that is good info. I guess I may take them off then. They're new skis that have the Madshus "Inteligrip transition" system. I really liked their performance with the skin on, and likely won't bother with kick wax, at least for a while. I had just thought that repeatedly applying and removing them would reduce the lifetime of the glue but it sounds like it might be better for them to be stored on their backing film that came with them. They've only been on there for a couple days so hopefully it's not an issue. There's little info from the manufacturer as to what should be done with them for maintainence.

[wabene]

There is stunningly little information from Madshus on any of their products.