Swix School: New Online Waxing & Prepping School
How to wax
Thu, Oct 6, 2005 - By Mike Muha
Swix has released a new free web site called the Swix School that provides narrated videos of how to prepare and wax skis. Each lesson - and there are many! - has a video and illustrations of what operation is taking place.
The site requires Flash Player 7.0; a link to download it is provided at the site.
Broadband and Lowband options
The first step when you start the Ski School is to select your language and bandwidth connection to the Internet. There are both "Broadband" and "Lowband" options for English speakers. Video and audio quality on the broadband option are excellent. There is no problem understanding the English spoken.
On lowband connection, the video is slightly jerky, but not annoying. The big problem is that none of the lowband videos are in English! I assume that Swix put the non-English videos up on the site by mistake and will hopefully fix the problem. You can still see what's going on, but a number of details only come out in the audio.
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One of the glide wax application lessons from the Nordic Racing section. The video plays on the left of the page, while illustrations appear on the right. Tools to use - with Swix product number - are clearly displayed. Click on the picture for an enlarged version. |
Sub Areas for Skier Types
The site is divided into Nordic, Alpine, and Snowboard areas. The Nordic area is subdivided into videos aimed at recreation, sport, and racing audiences. Each sub area has a number of lessons:
Recreation
- Base Cleaning
- Kick Waxing (4 lessons)
- Glide Waxing
- Waxless Skis (2 lessons)
Sport
- New Skis
- Glide Waxing
- Kick Waxing (3 lessons)
- Base Cleaning
Racing
- New Skis
- Glide Waxing
- CERA F (10 lessons)
- Kick Waxing (4 lessons)
- Cleaning (3 lessons
A Detailed Look at a Lesson
Lets look at the Racing sub area and the CERA F lessons in more detail. Drilling down, the ten lessons cover applying powder, solid, and liquid CERA F waxes; ironing, hand corking, and Roto corking each type of wax; and structuring the base:
CERA F
- Powder, FC8-10
- Powder, FC7
- Powder, Roto Cork
- Solid, Roto Cork
- Solid, Corking by Hand
- Solid, Ironing
- Liquid, Roto Cork
- Liquid, Corking by Hand
- Liquid, Ironing
- Structuring
In each lesson, a video plays on the left side of the page, while illustrations are shown on the right. Each illustration appears at the appropriate time during the video, then remains on the page as each new illustration appears. You can scroll up and down after the video ends to see all the illustrations - and the product codes for all the products used. This is particularly handy for understanding which Swix brush to use when!
The lessons tell how much wax to put on, how hard to brush, how many strokes to use when brushing - it's all quite detailed.
Bottom Line
The Swis School is similar to the very hard to find Toko Waxing and Tuning CD. Each does a great job explaining the intricacies of waxing for various levels of expertise. The Swix School, however, is always available at your nearest Internet connection.