Advantages of the Heat Box

At the Olympics or other high level international cross country ski competitions, commonly skis are stone ground on site. After the skis have been ground, they are saturated with wax in one of two ways, using a heatbox or using an iron. If time allows, skis are most likely to be saturated by using a heatbox. The fact that skis are prepared for international racing by using a heatbox or an iron implies that both methods work. However, there are 2 main advantages of using a heatbox. Due to the fact that most heatboxes used by professionals can hold many pairs of skis, the heatbox is very time efficient in terms of labour. The second advantage is that by not having to use an iron to saturate the skis, there is less risk of damage being done to the bases of skis. The temperature in the heat box is at most 62 °C, where as the temperature of an iron when used to saturate skis is a minimum of 120 °C.

Once the heatbox and waxing process is completed, I do not scrape the wax off the skis. The skis are shipped to the owner with the wax on the skis to ensure that the bases of the skis are not damaged in the shipping procedure.