How to properly cycle cross-country skis. Ski preparation. How the ski surface warms up when using a rotary cork and brushes

A very curious circumstance led us to this man. Our today's interlocutor is not a World Cup winner, not a coach Olympic champions, not a team serviceman. This person is a simple amateur skier, a master of sports in cross-country skiing. However, he is constantly referred to in the forums of the L.S. there are a variety of people on the Internet, they talk about him as a person whose skis always go a little better than those of their rivals. Moskvich Artyom Onishchenko in Moscow circles he is known as a person who knows a lot about scraping and ski preparation. Actually, that stream of people who go and go with their “killed” skis to a tiny apartment in the south of Moscow, very convincingly indicates that this person knows his business quite well.

– Artem, we will have to introduce you to our readers somehow. Help us please.

- Repeated champion and prize-winner of the city of Moscow, on the "Ski Track of Russia" in the presence of the athletes of the national team was fifteenth or twentieth, on the "Moscow Ski Track" - tenth or fifteenth. At the Marathon of the Holiday of the North, again in the presence of the national team, he repeatedly took places from 25th to 50th. Once was in the "top ten". At the Russian Championship for 70 km in Kandalaksha, he was 23rd, 25th, 28th. This year, at the age of 40, he won the Moscow Youth Championship, and the day before, at a different distance, he was second, losing to the first second. In many ways, by the way, because of the skis - the skis were fantastic on both of these days - I did everything I wanted with the people.

“Well, shall we start now?” By the way, you didn’t read in the last issue of L.S. excerpts from the discussion "Paraffin or cycle" from our site?

- It's a pity. Because in the forums people constantly refer to your experience, qualifications, they say that you are very good at skiing and know how to handle them. You know, that huge discussion that took place on our website and was then partially reproduced in the magazine, many, I'm afraid, did not help answer the question - you still need to cycle or paraffin skis. That's why it was very interesting for me to meet you.

But first, I would like to refer to the Honored Master of Sports of Russia in ski orienteering, world champion Ivan Kuzmin, who, after the publication of this publication, spoke very interestingly about the “author of the scandal” - about his brother, Leonid. He said: Lenya was very meticulous since childhood. For example, our parents bought us two absolutely identical aircraft models. You know, those plastic ones that need to be glued together from different parts? So, for me, says Kuzmin, two hours were enough to glue this plane and put it on a chest of drawers. Lenya glued his plane for a week. After that, he put his plane next to mine, and everything became clear to me. That is, before that, I was sure that I glued my plane without-zu-prech-but! But when I put my model Lenya next to me, I understood that the person had really worked - there was not a drop of glue anywhere, not a skew in the glued panels, not a burr. So it was a perfect product. And Ivan Kuzmin said in connection with this regarding the scraping problem: Lenya does not understand that what works in his hands will not work in other hands. He takes regular ski, an ordinary cycle, an ordinary machine, and he gets sweetie. If it is not Leonid Kuzmin who takes the same things into his hands, a person gets a completely different product.

So I told you this backstory, this joke, and now my question to you: after all, skis - cycle or paraffin? You, for example, freshly cycled do you ski?

- To a specific question - a specific answer: I run all responsible starts only on freshly cycled skiing.

– Freshly cycled and waxed, or freshly cycled"naked"?

- No, I won’t say what is on the “naked”, but what is on freshly cycled- That's for sure. I have the audacity to disagree with Alexander Alekseevich Grushin, who says that you can’t run on freshly cycled skiing. My experience shows that freshly cycled skis go much better than those that have already been ridden for a week. But, I would not accuse Alexander Alekseevich of any fraud or hypocrisy. Apparently, here the situation is similar to the story told to you by Ivan Kuzmin - everything ultimately depends on the hands. It may sound immodest, but I cycle skis like Leonid - I get very worried if I fail to make "candy". People I don’t know come, like I earn some pennies on this, but it’s very unpleasant for me if I can’t make a quality product for a person. I don't think a lot of people can do it really well. I know that in Moscow there are three or four people who ski very well. The rest are amateurs who may be doing it well, but for the most part still very mediocre.

- And what is your cycle?

“A regular metal plate, thick enough. With two grooves. This one, for example, is black.

- Do you sharpen them?

– Definitely, and always. Unlike Lenin's cycles, all my cycles are undermined. Their rigidity is not so high, they can be undermined with sandpaper.

– Do you do it yourself?

Do you have any device for this?

- No. I have a hand that is stuffed to disgrace. I will tell you that half of the success in scraping depends on the correct sharpening of the scraper. That is, at the beginning of the season, until my hand remembered the movement, I get a torn scraper. That is, visually it turns out absolutely the same, everything is beautiful, everything is amazing, everything glitters. But skis go worse. Half the success is sharpening, seriously I tell you. It must be felt. I feel this plane, I feel the angle, I feel the emery. I do this on a perfectly flat surface - usually on a mirror. You put sandpaper on the mirror so that the scraper slides on a perfectly flat surface ...

- Wow, I thought you were sharpening a cycle on a bar ...

- No. To sharpen a cycle on a whetstone, in my opinion, is unrealistic. I mean, maybe someone does, but I've never tried it.

- And what number of skins do you use for sharpening the cycles?

– It depends on what the weather is like. The closer to or above zero, the coarser the sanding required.

- So that the scraper leaves deeper grooves, grooves on the plastic?

- Yes. As a matter of fact, in last years I have achieved such a result that after sanding on the water, my picture on the ski is very similar to the steinslief. Only after the steinslif on the ski does a pile usually remain, which does not allow the ski to go and which must be disposed of with the help of paraffin. And after cycling, there is no pile left on the ski.

- Where do you make these grooves?

– Once a year I give all my cycles to my friends, and they make them at the factory. As you sharpen, these grooves gradually disappear and need to be renewed. I know a few scrapers who prep skis with very high carbon scrapers that can't be sharpened with sandpaper. This approach has its pros and cons. As long as you have a fresh sharpening, two or three pairs are very good. And then hack-work begins - the cycle becomes dull, and it is no longer possible to bring it at home to its previous conditions. They will not run to the factory every time to sharpen either. Therefore, I am very suspicious of people who cycle skis with high-carbon cycles - only the first two or three pairs come out from under high-carbon cycles. The rest will be bullshit.

- What does hack mean?

- I don’t know, maybe one of the chemists or physicists will correct me in terms of terminology, but a dull cycle, in my opinion, gives a conchoidal (from the word “shell”, hole) surface, if you look at it with magnification. A dull cycle cuts polyethylene without problems, but it does not cut off graphite particles, but picks out, crumbles, tears out in pieces. That's why the skis don't work.

- Does your cycle cut them off?

- Quite right. I feel the cycle - by the sound, by the way it goes, I feel that the cycle is no longer taking the ski, it is starting to pick it out. White, final passes I always make freshly sharpened cycles. Therefore, the process of cycling takes a very long time for me. For example, Misha Prokhorov is a good scraper, but he spends five minutes, or even two or three, on a pair of skis. I need at least half an hour for a couple of skis.

What is the difference between these two cycles?

- This one is very soft - it sharpens very easily, and blunts very easily. In fact, this is a rough scraper designed for high-speed passage, for removing microrelief - bumps, waves, etc. The microrelief is always removed at a significant angle and at a high speed of the cycle. When leveling the microrelief, it is impossible to slowly lead the cycle, because then all the irregularities begin to only get worse.

A stiffer cycle gives an ideal cut, but it is already much more difficult to remove all the bumps, depressions, ruts with it. It is designed for finishing. I go through a harder cycle in the end literally four or five times. But I already have this cycle for open water, when sharpening it, you need to grind it with a very brutal skin, and after it a rather large section remains on the ski. It's made of high carbon steel, and it's already pretty bad on sandpaper.

- And how do you drive the cycle on sandpaper - put it straight, perpendicular to the movement?

– Again at an angle, this gives the most stable result. If it's cold, then the angle is larger. And if you put the cycle straight - there will be littered edges, if perpendicular - it’s generally unrealistic, the cycle will jump on the sandpaper.

- What does the plastic that you cycle look like, what is it - flour, shavings, dust?

– Unlike Leonid Kuzmin, I shoot quite a lot. My old comrade and active participant in your forum Lyosha Ilvovsky always suffers a lot when he gives me skis for scraping. At the same time, he always laments, his heart bleeds, looking at how I cycle skis, and I myself, looking at his suffering, seem to be a sort of butcher with hairy hands, in an apron spattered with blood, plaiting with a huge cleaver in my hands meat carcasses (smiles). But it’s not like Lenya’s, it’s not powder, it’s still shavings.

- What do you mean "I shoot a lot"? A lot of cycles in one pass, or a lot in one ski preparation procedure?

- It depends on whose skis, how old they are, and what I want to get in the end. For example, my skis are usually well-bred, not killed, so I take off a little before each race. But still, it’s not a powder, it’s a little shavings - after one procedure for scraping plastic skis, I still have a total volume of about a teaspoon.

- Does the plastic curl with such rings?

– In general, yes. If a person comes from outside, his skis have not been cycled for a hundred years, all scratched, humpbacked, then, of course, there is a lot of plastic going down to bring out the microrelief. A lot of problems arise from the fact that people begin to cycle skis with thin, flexible cycles. Remember, at one time such thin steel cycles were very popular - they were also made by SWIX, or someone else? They are very similar to normal cycles, they have a good "toothed" edge, they give good chips, but they always bend in the hands. How many clogged skis have passed through my hands in these years - beyond words!

- What does "wrapped" mean?

- The cycle in people begins to bend in their hands and removes the plastic on the edges, leaving the groove area intact. And skis fell into my hands, which sometimes had no edges at all, and in the groove area the plastic remained practically untouched. And when I started cycling such skis, I removed the plastic only in the central part. I had to remove a lot of plastic to get such skis out.

- And yet, please tell us how you prepare your skis for the race - step by step? Now it is already clear that before each start you cycle them. But this applies to any weather - and frosty, and transitional, and outright heat?

- Yes. This applies to any weather. True, it matters how long ago I did this with this pair in last time. In general, you know, I noticed that it's like drug addicts - you start cycling skis, and you can no longer stop, you get addicted. Because cycled skis with increased use go better than before scraping, only two or three weeks. Then, these properties gradually decrease to the base level, maybe even a little lower. Therefore - again scraping, again increasing the sliding qualities, again a couple of weeks, again the hand reaches for the cycle ...

- Are you sure that you are not mistaken about the fact that skis after scraping go better, that you are not in captivity of subjective sensations?

- No, I'm not sure, because such things as the attenuation of the sliding properties of a ski over time are a purely subjective aspect of the matter. On the other hand, when for many, many years - fifteen, and even twenty - you notice the same thing, there is a suspicion that this is still objective. Although, maybe not, I don’t know ... But no one has set up such an experiment, and it’s probably impossible to set it up. How to set up such an experiment? Well, let's say he cycled his skis, rolled out of the descent. What, in two weeks you will be experimenting on the same slope with skis with a two-week cycle? But the weather has changed in these two weeks, it is impossible to compare. It's all very subjective, very. I can agree with someone's suggestion that this is a mistake, I won't argue, but my feeling is that I'm still sure of it.

- And if you have to run a bunch of two or three races in a row, do you also cycle your skis before each race?

- No, if I have to run a bunch of two or three races, I don’t cycle skis every day. It is quite enough to cycle the skis before the first day, and then you can perform during these three days quite calm. Well, unless by mistake on the first day you pulled up the plastic or burned the surface. But once every two or three weeks before important ski starts, I always cycle.

- And how do you prepare your skis before the start? The standard procedure for preparing skis before the start from Artem Onishchenko?

- Looping with cycles, brushing ....

- Wait. So you cycled the skis, what did you get? Shiny smooth surface?

- She's matte. The shiny surface can only ride in severe frost. Somewhere on your forum I read about preparing skis with glasses. So, we had such a skier at our university - Boris Rashchupkin from the Faculty of Biology. He supplied me with glass slides at one time. Only not thin, but very thick. They cut something with these glasses during practical exercises. And one side of these glasses was amazingly even, sharp. This edge gave a cut of plastic absolutely smooth, absolutely shiny. But, alas, such skis rode only in very severe frost - they did not ride on water at all. They stood like a stake, just stuck. Therefore, it depends on the weather. If it's warm, then a strong cut. If it's cold, then the surface is as smooth as possible. Although, all the same, there is a small section there, there must be.

- Okay, you cycled your skis. What's next?

- Brushing. Depending on the weather conditions- different brushes. If it is water, or weather close to zero or a small minus, then with the most rigid brushes ...

- Steel, copper?

– You know, the fact is that some steel brushes, for example, "RED CREEK", are softer than copper "SWIX". I tried their steel brush - it is softer, there is a thinner wire. It gives a softer texture. "SWIX" - tougher. With the RED CREEK steel brush, however, it is very good to choose dirt - it is softer, there are more wires, and it does an excellent job of this task. And for water, I use the most rigid brush known to me - brass.

- Practically after you cycle the sliding surface, do you also subject it to very hard brushing?

- Necessarily.

- That is, you are this case do not brush your pores, but actually scratch?

– Yes, I apply structure with brushes. But, let's just say, I still apply the initial structure, if water, with the help of this cycle - the sliding surface is already quite scratched after the cycle.

- Does this cycle give, as it were, large scratches on the plastic?

– In general, yes. But some burrs remain from it, like a pile. Not the same, of course, as after the steinslif, but it still exists. Therefore, using a stiff brush, I kind of apply the structure and at the same time remove the remaining pile.

- Well, after the brush?

- If it is frost, then fibertex polishing is in progress. If there is no frost, then I do nothing. By the way, if we return to the article in the last issue of "Skiing", then my point of view is very close to the point of view of Ivan Kuzmin. As a rule, after scraping the ski, I still wax. There were times when bare skis went very well. There have been! But not always. For example, A. Zavyalov's 60 km race last winter. I am preparing two pairs of skis: one with powder, the other naked. On the haul, in contrast to Lenin's theory *, bare skis ride better. That is, skis with powder have not even had time to pick up mud, and all the same, bare skis ride better. The experiment, of course, is impure, because the skis are different. But I chose the best couple in that situation, that is, naked. Yes, and so - I have one feature - I always swing for a long time. Therefore, in this race, I got out of some twenties or thirties for quite some time. In the course of the race, twenty or thirty fairly decent riders drove around. Finally, the second one arrived. So, I can say that some of those whom I rode had skis no worse than mine. And yet, for the most part, people skied a little slower. It would seem that here it is, the victory of bare plastic. But it's not so simple. Oleg Kochetkov won the race. We rode together for the last fifteen kilometers. I know that Kochetkov does not fill his head with all sorts of "nonsense" and always rides on powders and paraffins. So, his skis went frankly better than mine. That is, on each descent, he left me by 5–7 meters, despite the fact that I was standing behind him in the jet! That is, you understand, bare skis rode that day better than others. But worse than Kochetkov's. So draw your own conclusions.

Probably, it would be possible to carry out a purposeful experiment. I don’t know if Leonid Kuzmin did this, perhaps his conviction is based on such experiments? But how, in my opinion, should such an experiment be set up? Take one pair of skis with a steinslif, which had been treated with paraffin twenty or thirty times before, process it with weather paraffin, and roll it off. Right there on the machine next to them, cycle them, brush them, and roll them back as soon as possible, look at the rollout. Then right there on freshly cycled skis apply weather paraffin, preferably the one that was on the steinslief, and skate again. Then it would be more or less correct to talk about which option is better. Again, in order to draw more or less correct conclusions based on the results of such comparisons, these experiments must be carried out, probably, dozens, and maybe hundreds. I didn't do any of those experiments. My experiments consisted in the fact that Lyosha Ilvovsky, for example, resorted to me after skiing, I immediately cycled them for him, he walked again, rolled back, and came, squealing with delight - they rode much better with him. But, maybe, if they were also paraffinized after scraping, they would go even better with him? Don't know. Again, even this experiment is not entirely clean, because the same thing would have to be repeated after 40–50 km of skiing. See if the skis are gaining dirt or not? This is a complex, time-consuming experiment, who will undertake it?

I did simpler experiments - I rode a pair in which one ski was cycled, the other was not. And still I can’t say anything unambiguously, because, for example, one ski rides better in the field, but you drive into the forest, where there is completely different snow, another one rides better.

What did I end up with? Firstly, Leonid writes absolutely correctly: skis with a factory steinslide must be paraffinized many times. Because after the steinslif on skis there is a huge amount of pile, and only with the help of paraffin is it selected. What rides better - a good steinslif or a good scraper - I will not undertake to say. In my opinion, they say correctly - at high speeds, the steinslif works very well (because of this, it is so popular with skiers), at low speeds it starts to blunt. That is, for myself, I conditionally called it the effect of dry and wet friction. The speed is high, the water film is larger - the steinslif starts to work. The speed is low, that is, you are going uphill - cycle skis frankly go better. But on a descent, especially on water, a steinslif can work better than a scraper. The question is, what cycle? Because last year I realized that with these cycles my skis went very well on the water - no worse than a steinslief. Again, everything depends on what Ivan Kuzmin said - in the hands. Therefore, I can’t say unequivocally: guys, go ahead, all cycle skis! If a person does not know how to cycle, then his skis after scraping will go much worse than after the factory steinslif and paraffin. Maybe it will sound impudent, but even in my practice there were cases (although there were very few of them) when my skis did not start to go better after scraping. This is a rare occurrence, but it does happen.

- Is it worth it, is it possible to cycle cheap skis with extruded plastic?

- In my opinion, extruded plastic cycle is useless. That is, such skis can be cycled, and theoretically they should even go better, but this, believe me, is a real madhouse - when scraping such skis, you will have to lower three or even four tenths of a millimeter of plastic, because on top of this plastic there is always a crust, which is then gnawed out in pieces during the scraping process.

- Wait, but on skis with extruded a lot of people ride plastic - schoolchildren, amateur veterans who, in all seriousness, are trying to scrape these skis, wax… What should they do with these skis?

– I don't think they need to cycle them. If you cycle, then only a very experienced person, because extruded plastic is extremely hard to cycle. For example, when people with such skis come to me, I always try to dissuade the owner from scraping. Because no one can guarantee that such plastic under the influence of a cycle will not break out in pieces, shreds. And I don't feel like ruining people's skis.

- I would like to give you an example: for quite a long time - about 15 years - I did not take a cycle in my hands, and last year I tried to cycle my skis on my own. Naturally, at a certain moment the hand jumped off, a serif appeared on the edge. Began to correct, the notch deepened. What to do? Suppose there is no such Artyom Onishchenko at hand, but it’s a pity for skis. Ivan Kuzmin in such cases says: you have a good training pair of skis. But the skis had just been quite combat - can something be done in this situation?

- This is a very common episode. There are several options: either, indeed, transfer the skis to the category of training ones, or go to the workshop and make a new steinslief, or still look for a decent scraper. The fourth option, for those who are especially persistent, is to find old skis and train on them for a long, long time, put your hand on them. Perhaps you will achieve something, in the end, everything is done by human hands, there is nothing impossible in this.

- And the option with a bar and a skin?

– There were cases in my practice when people brought completely killed skis that could no longer be straightened by any scraping. At first glance, in such cases, the last option remains - a bar and a skin. But this option is very bad because when saving skis with the help of a bar and a skin, almost all plastic is removed from the ski. That is, you take them out once, save them, and after that it will no longer be possible to cycle the skis. Such “patients” repeatedly “died” in my hands, therefore the same Lyosha Ilvovsky always stands above my soul and is very worried about every pair of his skis, because one of these deceased patients was just his pair of skis. And before scraping, I honestly warned him: there is no longer plastic, they cannot be cycled, and he told me: - well, please, just a little bit. It ended sadly. These skis came out of my hands still alive, but when he began to apply paraffin on these skis at home and remove it with a scraper, the paraffin began to come off the skis already with the remnants of plastic, the substrate climbed.

And one more aspect of using sandpaper ... It is impossible to get a perfectly flat surface with sandpaper. No matter how hard you try, when working with a bar, the edges will definitely fall over.

- Oh really?

- Necessarily! Because the emery itself has damping properties. In addition, at the edges it hangs over the slippery, you can’t do anything - the edges will definitely collapse a little. In addition, do not forget that after sanding you must definitely cycle the skis, because after sanding the skis will not go at all. Because skinned skis are shaggy by definition. And then, after sanding, the plastic picks up an abrasive - those small pebbles from which the skin is made are interspersed in the sliding surface, and such plastic will never go. So after the skin, you still have to scrape, and quite strong. Therefore, after such a restoration method, you have practically no plastic left on your skis.

- If you don't know how to cycle skis, don't take it. You will definitely ruin more than one couple before you learn something. If you picked up a cycle for the very specific purpose of improving the sliding properties of your favorite (often only) pair of skis, you will almost certainly achieve the exact opposite result. If you are determined to try to acquire scraping skills, try to dig up somewhere in the closet (or buy someone else's cheaply) old dead skis, preferably with normal, non-extruded plastic. It is almost certain that during these lessons you will ruin more than one such pair of skis. But if you still have such skis, if you have the desire, time, then there is nothing impossible in this.

By the way, this year, after a discussion on the website and publication in L.S., I began to approach the problem of choosing between naked and waxed skiing, began to experiment more. As a rule, now I also take from one of my friends extra pair and I always leave one pair of skis naked. More than once or twice my bare skis went frankly worse. This is to the question of whose position of the Kuzmin brothers is closer to me - the position of Ivan is closer to me. And yet in each case it is necessary to look separately. The only thing I can say with absolute certainty is that after the steinslif, the skis must be waxed many times. I don't know of any examples of bare skis going well after a steinslif.

Interviewed by Valery PUTINTSEV

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