Do Skis Get Blunt?

...metal edges which apparently have to be sharpened from time to time, or not, as the case may be.

Former junior and Masters racer here. Glad to see there's some very qualified voices in these comments, including a few who are currently involved (as racing parents). I very much appreciate the level of technical detail and accuracy in those comments. I'll talk base bevels all day.

Pretty much agree with everything those folks have written. Most definitely sharp edges, and your bevels, matter when you are really pushing it, especially if you are racing, and most especially if you are on extremely hard or even water-injected snow.

Outside of that type of skiing, the ski tech on the lift was, I think, making a point that is true enough for most "normie" skiers, and inadvertently the blog author validated it with the microscope experiment. The short version is that once your edge angles are set, "polishing" them with a diamond stone should, generally, mostly, be all that is necessary to restore the edge shape after use. No filing should be necessary. If the edge get damaged with rocks or rust, this is no longer true. All caveats apply. The ski tech is just trying to say "don't pay a shop to run your skis through the machine when all you need is to rub your edges with a diamond stone for a minute."

Now, just how practical this is, again depends on who you are. You'd have to be:

- A regular enough skier to own your own equipment

- Good enough to benefit from a tuned edge

- Technical and handy enough to buy a diamond stone and learn to use it

- It has to not be impractical to go through this ritual after skiing (try doing this with two or three young, tired kids in tow)

Anyway I just enjoyed having this be on the front page of HN today. I'm good at like 2 things and this is one of them.

I grew up in Maine skiing at Sunday River but spent my entire childhood in the park never once cared about my edges. Had I been in the pipe, maybe a different story.

> Luckily, fixing this kind of damage isn’t hard. I use a 3D printed jig with a 500 grit diamond stone. A couple of glides down the edge is enough to completely clear this up.

I don't ski often enough to own my own skis, so I rent them. Having used those rentals in icy conditions, I've had a lousy time due to their shoddy edges. A tool like this would make my day(s) on the slopes so much better. Anybody know of a place I could buy something like this, so that I could bring the rentals into "serviceable" condition?

I can tell you are very proud of your U12 boy and from that video, you should be. His fundamentals are rock solid. His fore-aft is good, his timing is excellent, he's clearly prepared for the course well in inspection. He's generally not reaching to cross-block, as evidenced by the strategic inside-clear at the top of the pitch. Really, really strong.