Name: Bruce Adelsman Report Filed: February 27, 2001 Products used: Toko Waxing Iron When: Since January 2001 Where: My basement

About midway through the season, Toko released a new version of waxing irons. The new iron takes some of the best features of older Toko irons, and integrates a number of nice new touches. I'm embarrassed to say it, but this is the first quality waxing iron I've ever owned. I had been using the old standard, a clothes iron (without holes!), for a number of years, but was always a bit worried about the correct temperature and heat fluctuation in the iron. While designing a quality waxing iron isn't rocket science, the Toko iron reflects a number of well thought out design decisions. First, the unit comes with a clip for attaching the TexWax sheets. But the clip is detachable and removes easily. The unit has a big dial with the temperatures clearly shown (on my unit, the temperatures are marked in Fahrenheit). On the back of the iron, there is a convient chart listing the common waxing temperatures for Toko waxes. The base plate of the unit is the most impressive feature. The plate is a good 1/2 inch thick, ensuring an even heating surface. The edges of the plate have been smartly beveled to allow the iron to more easily ride up over wax that has been dripped onto the ski. And they didn't just bevel the front of the plate, but all four sides. And finally, there is the hallmark of Toko irons: the diamond pattern in the front plate of the iron. This pattern really does help evenly spread the wax. I also found it very helpful when rubbing the wax against the iron for dripping on the ski. In use, the iron works great. After a short initial period of warming up the plate, it seems to stay locked into the dialed temperature. With my old clothes iron I would find the temperature fluctuating such that with cold glide waxes, it would vary from melting the bar just right, to being so cool that it would barely melt the wax. Not so with the Toko iron -- I could dial it in to the perfect setting to keep the waxing at the melting point. I didn't have the equipment to check the actual temperature of the iron to see how it matched with the dial, but based on some of the cold waxes I used, it seemed to be correct. The wax iron has some additional nice features: The cord attachment to the iron pivots, so when you put the iron down the cord moves to allow it to stand upright easily. The cord itself is quite long, about 8 feet, making it easier to reach the full length of the ski. The end of the handle is now rounded off (it was a square end on older irons), making it less likely to catch the cord while ironing. And finally, the resting angle of the iron is aligned such that an excess wax will drip down onto the edge of the base plate or table, rather than running over the body of the iron. Summary: All told, a very well designed, top notch iron. If you're still using that old clothing iron -- run out and get one of these babies today! Thanks to Pioneer Sports for supplying us with the waxing iron. More details on this and other Toko products on the Toko Wax web site.

Name: Jim Smith Report Filed: January 29, 2000 Products used: Red Creek roto brush system When: January 2000 Where: Various locations/conditions

A few years back I was listening to an interview with the winner of the Birkie. During the course of the interview he said something like "I'd really like to thank my wax technician, my skis were very fast." Then it suddenly dawned on me. While I'm spending hours a week in my basement waxing and polishing my skis, the fast guys are out training because someone else is waxing their skis. My theory was that if only I had that extra 40K per week of ski time I'd probably be a lot faster too. Well, the Red Creek Roto brushes gave me a chance to test my theory. The Red Creek Roto brush system I evaluated was very easy to use. The system that I used consisted of a single handle and two brushes. All I needed to supply was a variable speed drill. The drill attaches to a handle that spins the brushes. You just slide the brush onto the handle and attach the handle to your drill. Turn on your drill and let the drill do the polishing work. You have to be careful about a few things. The brush should spin towards the front of the ski. (so you get the same action as brushing from tip to tail) Don't leave the brush in one spot for a long time (kind of obvious). You can move the brush from front to back or back to front as long as the brush is rotating towards the front of the ski. The two brushes I evaluated seemed very adequate for polishing my skis. One was a 6 mm. horse hair brush and the other was a 4 mm Nylon brush. I would first polish using the horse hair brush for about 15 to 20 seconds. This would give the ski a matte finish. Then I would polish using the nylon brush. It seemed that 60 seconds per ski would give my skis a polishing that was far superior to anything I could do using a hand brush. It takes about 30 seconds to switch brushes. But Red creek has a solution for this. A double brush handle that holds two brushes so you don't have to switch. I'm not sure what the price difference is, but it seems that this could be a time saver. Using these two brushes I still needed to do a final polishing step by hand using a soft nylon brush and fiber-tex. Red Creek also has a solution for this. A 7mm soft nylon brush and a polishing roller that you attach fiber-tex to that I didn't evaluate. I would say that this system saves me about a half hour per week of polishing time and does a far superior job than hand brushing. It works especially well on hard waxes such as Swix CH4 or graphite based waxes which are very difficult to brush out by hand. Now the only test left is to see if the extra half hour of training per week saved by using these brushes will make me any faster.