Earlier this year, I wrote up a description of how I fixed a blown sidewall on a pair of Armada Declivity Xs. I got a lot of positive feedback, and the general consensus from the NS community was that I should do the same with my next gear fix, so here it is (although much less involved than the last). This spring I noticed that I was losing the edge on a pair of 2017 Salomon Rocker2 100s.

These skis have been my daily driver since I got them in late 2016, and in my opinion are one of the best all-mountain freestyle skis I've ever been on, so I didn't want to just let the edge continue pulling out. This was a relatively simple fix. I don't think the edge would have stayed in well if I had glued it back in, and I didn't want to come back to the same issue again, so I just cut the edge out. To cut it out cleanly, I had to cut the P-tex back to expose the tangs of the edge so the whole piece would come out.

Once the tangs were exposed, I used a Dremel tool to cut through the edge to get the problem section out.

Obviously I didn't want any water getting into the core of the ski, so I used G/flex 650 toughened epoxy to seal it back up. This is a similar epoxy to the Git-Rot I used in my last repair. Like Git-Rot, it is more flexible than standard epoxies and polyesters, but stiffer than most adhesive sealants. It is also designed to absorb the stress of shock and vibration, which makes it an ideal material to use on skis.

I used a syringe to inject the epoxy into the ski, to minimize the mess and to ensure that the epoxy got as deep into the opening as possible.

Then, I clamped a thin piece of metal to the base of the ski, with a paper towel between the metal and the ski, so that the metal would not be bonded to the base.

This resulted in a pretty smooth finish. The epoxy was a bit raised above the P-tex, but I was able to sand it down to make it flush.

It's not the prettiest looking fix, but I've skied about 5 days on them since I did it, and it seems to be holding up alright. Since this was on the inside edge of the ski, I'm a little concerned about the skis knocking together and wearing down the epoxy quickly, so I swapped which ski goes on which foot to keep the epoxy on the outside edge. So far that seems to be working fine.

If you've made it this far, I hope that you found this useful or interesting. Buying new gear sucks, so I'm all about making what I have last as long as possible.

Finally, I'd like to thank Cy Whitling, who inspired me to share my fixes with the community. I'm a huge fan of his work, and enjoy seeing his content on NS and Instagram. Hopefully he reads this!