Pollen?

In trying to find a way to apply wax in the field, I tried dissolving ski wax, mostly paraffin, in lots of chemicals.

I use Swix F4 rub-on wax; comes in a small can w applicator and I carry a small cloth for buffing; there are lots of options: No Iron Waxes

A quick note on citrus cleaners...

Though they work well to remove gnarly pollen goo, they prevent skin adhesives from sticking well to ski bases. In my experience, all cleaner residue needs to be removed thoroughly.

A quick note on citrus cleaners...

Though they work well to remove gnarly pollen goo,  they prevent skin adhesives from sticking well to ski bases. In my experience, all cleaner residue needs to be removed thoroughly.

I agree, but this is America, we are in a period called post-modernism in which no one is accepted as a definitive expert on anything, most of us are born with complete knowledge, and opinions and experiences differ as this link shows: How to clean bases

here's a noted bc skier's advice  Craig Dostie says ...

another informed ski industry opinion  Slidewright says

What I use rarely, lightly, and carefully Swix Base Cleaner and fibelene   and  Swix Video

And if you use a bunch of flouride an extremen cleaning is warranted as illustrated by my ski maintenance guru, Jacques from Bend, OR  End of season flourowax removal

Jacques has a long series of long-winded detailed video on ski prep and maintenance and I think I have watched all of them AND benefitted from them, learned a lot! Swix also has a series of videos by their tuning masters.

gnarly pollen goo

Nature's way of saying it's rock climbing time!!!

I had my reasons for trying to make my own rub on wax, but the point here is that I ended up with a list of solvents that won't cut paraffin. Later these 'useless' solvents came to interest me because they could potentially clean ski bases of pollen without sabotaging the wax already on the bases.

So my question: Has anyone else tried removing pollen with alcohols in the field, and if so how would successful were you? Were you able to get the pollen off, and did it remove the desirable wax?

I've only tried it once, it seemed to work quite well- but I did not try to apply skins after removing the pollen, which is the real test.

Extruded bases usually found on cheaper skis may work better in these conditions. Unlike the sintered bases that hold wax in the interstitial spaces in the p-tex, extruded bases don't allow wax to penetrate the surface.

While extruded bases don't hold wax, they do allow easier pollen removal than sintered bases where the waxes in the pollen latch into the base.

In general, extruded bases require little maintenance compared to the sintered bases. As most BC skiers don't rewax often (myself included), the performance benefits of sintered bases are usually negated.