Using a household clothes iron to iron on ski wax.....

Ok, it's almost time to put skis away but I am hoping someone will
invite me to ski with them at some out of the way snowy
paradise.......in lieu of that I will wax my new skate skis to put them
away for next year. Can I use a regular iron on my skis?

You can use a regular iron as long as it doesn't have holes in the bottom
The wax will get into the inside of the iron and smoke like hel............

Best to use a old iron with out holes or buy a real waxing iron.

Have a great summer
Sean


"nordvind" wrote in message
oups.com...
Ok, it's almost time to put skis away but I am hoping someone will
invite me to ski with them at some out of the way snowy
paradise.......in lieu of that I will wax my new skate skis to put them
away for next year. Can I use a regular iron on my skis?

Sean wrote:
You can use a regular iron as long as it doesn't have holes in the bottom
The wax will get into the inside of the iron and smoke like hel............

Best to use a old iron with out holes or buy a real waxing iron.

Have a great summer
Sean

In the day, I used to use a clothes iron with steam holes - but with
tin foil over it. Looked ugly, but worked .... in a fashion. I
certainly don't recommend it, but I imagine it would work fine for just
putting on some storage wax - just don't smoke the wax and quit as soon
as you've melted on an even layer.

On 26 Mar 2006 19:39:49 -0800, "Camilo" wrote:


Sean wrote:
You can use a regular iron as long as it doesn't have holes in the bottom
The wax will get into the inside of the iron and smoke like hel............

Best to use a old iron with out holes or buy a real waxing iron.

Have a great summer
Sean

In the day, I used to use a clothes iron with steam holes - but with
tin foil over it. Looked ugly, but worked .... in a fashion. I
certainly don't recommend it, but I imagine it would work fine for just
putting on some storage wax - just don't smoke the wax and quit as soon
as you've melted on an even layer.

Yeah, I did it similarly for a while. But in practice the waxed
smoked a bit anyway -- the irons temperature varied a lot as its
heating element turned off and on.

I think this works OK for softer waxes such as for storage or warm
weather. For putting on a hard, cold wax it is not good.

JFT


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JFT,
Check out the SWIX Econo package.
http://www.reliableracing.com/detail...&category=2200
This comes with the iron and 5 cakes of CH Wax. This is a great value.
You can make an old clothes iron work - the worst part is the
constantly fluctuating heat.
With the waxing irons you set the heat and the iron maintains that temp
setting.
The clothes irons and cheaper variants have wild temperature swings.
This makes it a pain to wax but also increases the chance that you will
over heat your ski base.
/john

On 27 Mar 2006 04:16:25 -0800, "jgs" wrote:

JFT,
Check out the SWIX Econo package.
http://www.reliableracing.com/detail...&category=2200

Thanks. I have a proper wax iron and was telling the OP about my
experience years ago with a clothes iron.

The clothes irons and cheaper variants have wild temperature swings.
This makes it a pain to wax but also increases the chance that you will
over heat your ski base.

Right. That's why I said a clothes iron doesn't work well for cold
waxes but can for softwaxes.

JT

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I have to pipe in saying that I agree totally with these guys - if you
can afford it, even the cheapest waxing iron is better than any clothes
iron. Good skis are worth it. My very old experience was more or less
to tell what you can get by with in a pinch, far from optimal. I
started waxing skis in the 70s, basically with no instruction or
guidance and that's the era I'm talking about. Buy a waxing iron if
you can. If you can afford a cut or two above the cheapest, its like
any tool you use a lot - you're always glad you bought as good of one
as you can afford. The nice features and quality are worth it every
time you use it. If its something you only use in a blue moon, you can
get by with less and do fine.

nordvind wrote:
Ok, it's almost time to put skis away but I am hoping someone will
invite me to ski with them at some out of the way snowy
paradise.......in lieu of that I will wax my new skate skis to put them
away for next year. Can I use a regular iron on my skis?

You can do it but the heat is unstable.
1) Get a Swix iron, it is stable, has no holes and you just set the dial
to the CH # of the wax you use!
2)Most ski store are having 50% off sales so you can get one cheap!
gr

Mange takk!!! Lots of good advice, I am off to look for 50 percent off
waxing irons.....

For what it's worth, I bought the Swix Econo iron a couple of years ago
and it died on me after only about a season. Could have been just a
fluke, but could also have been "you get what you pay for". I bought a
better one for this season and so far it's been great. The other thing
I had noticed about the Swix Econo iron was that its base was not very
massive, so I imagine the temperature fluctuated a bit more.

Jim

nordvind wrote:
Mange takk!!! Lots of good advice, I am off to look for 50 percent off
waxing irons.....