Welcome back to our wax recap for the 2024/2025 ski season! In previous years I have tried to release my thoughts/information from each weekend that we wax for throughout the season. I typically start off strong, but come February/March my energy and time runs out and sometimes miss a post or two. I will make a better effort to get these out on a more regular basis this season!
Entering this season I want to make a slight change to how I approach these weekends and how I select waxes to test. In previous years, I have tried to pick one or two waxes from each several different companies. The issue with this is that I am basically just guessing as to which one or two products might be best and could potentially miss out on the actual winning product. Instead, I want to focus in on one or two different brands and test a wider range of products from those companies, and maybe test one or two specialty products from different brands in certain conditions.
The two brands that I want to focus in on this season is Rex and Star. We have extensive experience with both companies and have see good products across pretty much the entire line. Going deeper with these companies allows us to learn more about the specifics of each product and can let us get a better understanding of when to recommend these products in the future. We will still test products from other companies, but it will be much more limited than what we have done in the past.
12/13 – Training Day
The first day that we were up at cable we were recovering from a couple days of frigid weather so we tested later in the afternoon during the heat of the day focusing on just melt on paraffins. Using our brand new fleet of Salomon S/Lab test skis, we were able to do paired glideouts to test 8 products. You can read a short recap here on how we test skis by using paired glideouts HERE. Below are the products we tested and the results of the test.
Paraffin Test:
Ski 1 - Rex NF Sisu Base Wax
Ski 2 - Rex NF21 Block
Ski 3 - Rex NFX41Powder
Ski 4 - Rex NFX00 Sisu White Powder
Ski 5 - Star All Conditions Powder
Ski 6 - Star All Conditions Nero Powder
Ski 7 - Swix Marathon Powder
Ski 8 - Star Next Dark Cold Powder
Results:
1. Star All Conditions +0cm
1. Rex NFX00 Sisu White Powder +0cm
3. Rex NF21 Block +5cm
4. Star All Conditions Nero +20cm
5. Rex NF Sisu Base Wax +25cm
6. Swix Marathon Powder + 30cm
7. Star Next Dark Cold Powder +40cm
7. Rex NFX41 Powder +40cm
Going into the weekend we had all of our skis prepped with the new Rex NF Sisu Base wax. It is by far the most affordable of the options that we tested and makes a great underlayer for our race waxes. We decided that if there was something else that stood out, we would make the switch over to that fast wax. The top 5 options were all very close in our tests. We decided that our initial call of Rex NF Sisu Base was more than good enough to race on, especially since we applied it 3 days earlier back at the shop which should help increase performance and probably close the gap to the first place product. For those that dropped skis off remotely to us, we went with the Rex NFX00 Sisu White Powder as we heard feedback from other teams that it was higher in their results than the Star All Conditions Powder.
12/14 – Classic Sprint
Classic days we always focus more on kick than we do on glide. When we come up to these JNQs we usually split our team up and have one of us focus on kick while the other focuses in on glide. I had Matt Clarke, one of our other full time managers, come up with me this weekend. I sent Matt out on the glide tests while I worked through kick testing.
We teamed up again with Sam Myers from the University of Wisconsin – Green Bay to help increase our man power for testing, and get access to an additional kick wax fleet. We helped supply Green Bay with a new Fischer kick test fleet this season so between the two of us we had 2 x 4 pair fleets to work with on kick. The plan going into testing was to utilize my test fleet to work on klister covers, and work on Sam’s fleet to test kick waxes with a traditional binder.
The snow was mostly man-made and very abrasive which is why I focused more on the klister cover. I split my fleet into two separate tests. The first half was testing different covers using the same base klister, the second half was testing different klisters with the same cover. I could use the combination of these two tests to figure out the best binder/klister and the best cover.
Klister Covers:
1a - Rex Base Klister + Swix VP45
1b - Rex Base Klister + Rode VO
2a - Rex Base Klister + Star M21
2b - Rex Base Klister + Rex TK-1814 (now non-fluoro!)
Results:
1a>1b
2a>2b
1a>2a
All of these tests were really close. Every thing had spectacular kick, and there was only very slight differences with speed. We leaned towards Swix VP45 as the main option for the morning.
Klisters:
3a - Rex Base Klister + Rode VO
3b - Rex Gold Klister + Rode VO
4a - Vauhti LDR Klister + Rode VO
4b - Rex Purple Klister + Rode VO
Results:
3a>3b
4b>4a
3a>4b
This was not as close of a test. 3a was significantly faster than any of the other klister options. This made the decision fairly easy so we loaded up our wax machine with a tray of Rex Base Klister and covered it with Swix VP45.
On Sam’s fleet we tested a bunch of different kick waxes using just a Toko Green binder. Unfortunately I don’t have his notes from this day, but he had two waxes that rose to the top of his test, Star M21 and Rex TK-1814. Since we had Star M21 very close in our test we were confident that we were on the right track. I sent Sam out for one more test looking at the Toko Green binder vs. the Rex Base Klister and he really liked the Base Klister for kick, and the speed was basically the same.
In the end, we used the Rex Base Klister for the entirety of the day, and swapped out covers as conditions changed slightly. The early races we used Swix VP45 with VP50 as the bump if more kick was needed. For the later starters we moved towards Star M21 with M26 as the bump.
For glide, we split our top coat test into both a product and application test. We tested 4 different blocks/powders and 4 different liquids. We then also compared the application of the paraffin vs. block vs. liquid vs. block + liquid. Check out the results below:
Top Coats:
1a – Rex NFX Old Block
1b – Rex NFX Blue Block
2a – Rex Olos Powder
2b – Star Med Block
3a – Star All Conditions Liquid
3b – Swix TS7 Liquid
4a – Rex NF21 Liquid
4b – Rode RXL WC Med Liquid
Results:
1a>1b
2a>2b
3a>3b
4a>4b
1a>2a
4b>3a
1a>4b
Application:
5a – Rex NFX00 Sisu White Powder
5b – Rex NFX00 Sisu White Powder + Rex NFX Cold Block
6a – Rex NFX00 Sisu White Powder + Rex NF21 Liquid
6b – Rex NFX00 Sisu White Powder + Rex NFX Cold Block + Rex NF21 Liquid
Results:
5b>5a
6a>6b
5b>6a
This was a very clear test for us. Running through the top coats, the liquids were not feeling great and the new roto wool blocks from Rex both felt great. We had the Rex NFX Old block win our top coat test. The results was backed up with our application test that showed that the blocks were better than the comparable liquid product. We ended up running this top coat all day long.
12/15 – Skate Distance
At the end of a long day on Saturday, we chatted with a few other teams and clubs that had more resources and man power to continue testing through the later parts of the day as the temperatures rose to figure out if there was a change needed to be made to our paraffin that we had applied earlier in the week. We got feedback that Rex NFX41 powder was running well as more moisture came out in the man made snowpack. We applied this to all of our skate skis for Sundays skate race.
We had a bit more time to test in the morning of the skate race and decided to run paired glide outs once more to get some objective numbers behind our tests. We chose 8 products to look at, similar to the day prior we picked 4 liquids and 4 blocks to test. Below are the results:
Top Coats:
Ski 1 – Rex NF41 Liquid
Ski 2 – Star Warm Liquid
Ski 3 – Rode RXL WC Med Liquid
Ski 4 – Swix TS10 Liquid
Ski 5 – Star Warm Block
Ski 6 – Swix TST10 Block
Ski 7 – Rex Olos Powder
Ski 8 – Rex NFX Old Block
Results:
1. Star Warm Liquid +0cm
2. Rex NF41 Liquid +30cm
2. Rode RXL WC Med Liquid +30cm
4. Star Warm Block +60cm
5. Rex NFX Old Block +70cm
6. Swix TS10 Liquid +80cm
7. Rex Olos Powder +100cm
7. Swix TST10 Block +100cm
This again was pretty clear results for us. With the extra humidity coming out in the snow (and also the mist in the air), I was going to guess that liquids would be running better than the blocks on this day. Once we ran through the initial test, Matt and I went out for a lap on our top two products (Star Warm and Rex NF41) and the retested. I wanted to make sure that there wasn’t a significant difference in durability between the top two products. After the 3km lap we tested the waxes and the Rex NF41 caught up to the Star Warm in the glideout and they were tied. It didn’t beat the Star Warm by enough to overcome the advantage gained in the initial parts of the race so we ended up on the Star Warm. We retested several times through the day and none of the results changed for us.
Takeaways
There was a couple things that I was able to take away from this weekend of testing. The new Star All Conditions waxes were great. We really liked how these felt and applied for the paraffin portion of our testing. The liquid didn’t test well on Saturday, but no liquid really did so it isn’t a huge worry. Rex Olos powder probably needs to be colder/drier snow to work well. I have gotten a lot of feedback from my brother about this product being used over on the World Cup. We tried it a couple of times this weekend, and it felt good on Saturday when we were running the blocks as a top coat, but fell of on Sunday when liquids started to feel better. I will be testing this product again this upcoming weekend in Itasca. The last takeaway from this weekend was from the kick testing on Saturday. We adopted the K.I.S.S. motto for our wax job (keep it simple, stupid). Klister binder + a good purple wax is a great combination on hard packed man made snow. It was difficult to find an option that didn’t feel good on this day.
Whats up next?
I will be heading up to Mt. Itasca in Coleraine this upcoming weekend for the second of back to back JNQ weekends. We will have a skate sprint on a frigid (of course) Saturday and classic distance on Sunday where the temperatures hopefully warm up a little bit for us. It seems like it will be a very easy weekend of waxing with temperatures in the single digits on Saturday and no precipitation in the forecast for Sunday.
