First post, intro and a question about shortening Asnes kick skins

[Baaahb]

One of the beauties of kickers (at least the old style kickers) is you do not need to remove your skis to take them off. You don't need to remove your skis to take off full skins, either, but that takes either short skis, great flexibility or committing the unpardonable sin of asking your partner for some help.

[TreeFallin]

You're right. I have a set of BD Kicker Skins that I use sometimes on Madshus Epoch. Those unbuckle on the top sheet and can be peeled off without taking the ski off.

[TreeFallin]

The mohair skins from Neptune arrived today. The difference in width is significant. That's good news I think. I will test them soon.

[TreeFallin]

Today I tested the new skins on my Asnes Holmenkollen and there was a definite improvement in glide...then I rewaxed them with blue glide and blue kick wax and aaah enjoyed the way a ski should glide. Now I'm ready next weekend's trip.

[Cannatonic]

you must be up there pretty far in Maine - we went to 38 degrees after the snow yesterday and now it's 2 days of white concrete around here - hopefully good spring skiing THurs & friday when it warms back up

[TreeFallin]

I'm skiing trails east of Moosehead Lake on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Preliminary temperature forecast is highs of 27, 29 and 30 respectively.

This morning temperatures were pretty low with a midday high of 25 at Pineland Farms where I was testing.

Cheers

[Cannatonic]

nice! They've had record snowfall up there, should be awesome!

[TreeFallin]

ok. So the verdict is: The mohair skins are MUCH BETTER.

I skied 30 miles spread over 2 days, waxed green and had a terrific time. On the second day I made a detour up a mountain on a trail called Skyline Trail. It went straight up so I attached the mohair skins.




I pretty much walked straight up...no need for herringbone. One the other side of this trail the slope is much gentler and sometimes even straight. I ended up doing kick and glide for 2 miles and to my delight it worked great.

[Cannatonic]

sounds great, I've been skiing the same thing over the last 3 days - MT51's with the 30mm mohair on crappy spring snow conditions. Much quieter than fischscales and nice gliding, they were working better than my friends' fischscales on the cruddy snow. Unlike scales, the grip is actually better on loose, uncompressed snow too, you can climb hills better just by putting your skis in the softer snow next to the main track.

I did find one downside - when I pulled the skins off, a lot of the glue came off and stuck to the kick-wax. I have Rex Universal pine tar wax on, similar to Blue Extra, that's a mistake, it's too sticky. Next time I'll put green or regular blue kick wax on there. I think I can re-glue the skins if necessary right? Never tried it before.

[TreeFallin]

I think running hot iron over skins will recondition them. Just put wax paper over the sticky area before ironing. I have also in the past bought a tube of Pomoca skin glue and tried to put some on my old skins. That was in the past before I found out about ironing skins and the result was kind of blotchy although it did help.