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Repair - Maintenance

Ski damage splits into three jobs, and each needs different material. Base gouges and core shots are filled with P-Tex: candles you light and drip for the occasional repair, or an extruder gun with sticks if you fix enough skis to want a faster, cleaner fill. A hot spot torch sets the fill and burns off the carbon that leaves a drip repair looking grey. Edge damage is a separate problem. A burred or dinged edge needs edge repair material and a diamond file, not plastic. Stripped or badly placed binding holes need plugs and a jig to drill true.

Knowing when a repair is worth doing matters as much as the material. A core shot deep enough to reach the core will take on water and start to delaminate, so it gets filled before the next ski day; a shallow scratch in the base can wait for the next tune. Before you fill anything, check that the base is flat. A true bar laid across the ski shows whether it is flat, convex, concave or railed, which is what you are actually fixing half the time. No amount of P-Tex corrects it.

Most of what is here is SVST (Sun Valley Ski Tools), which operates out of the same building as this shop: P-Tex, true bars and mounting jigs, alongside Swix sidewall cutters, steel scrapers and diamond files, and the hole plugs and drivers for binding work. These are the materials race rooms and home tuners reach for. We supply them rather than doing the work ourselves, and most of the SVST side of this list is designed in the same building as the shop.

See tuning equipment for the full tool range, edge beveling for angle work, and mounting equipment for binding installation.

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