The word “ski” is of Slavic origin, and was first mentioned in a message from Emperor Nicephorus to the Kyiv prince Vladimir Monomakh at the beginning of the 12th century. Chronicles of the 15th-16th centuries also talk about the use of skis for military purposes.

Skis not only make it easier for a hunter to move through snowy terrain, but also make it possible to hunt in very deep snow, when all paths and roads in the taiga are closed to the “foot” hunter.

In ancient times, a hunter who crossed someone else's path had their skis cut off - this suggests that skis were and are one of the most important types of hunter equipment. Not only successful fishing, but also the health, and sometimes even the life of the hunter, directly depends on the quality of skis. What are the requirements for hunting skis now? Firstly, they must be strong, but light, and secondly, they must provide easy ascent to fairly steep slopes.

With certain skills and knowledge, you can make skis yourself. The most durable skis are made from birch and maple, while less durable skis are made from spruce. It is best to harvest birch ridges for skis in winter, when the movement of sap in the tree is stopped. The tree chosen is smooth, with thin bark, without knots in the lower part of the trunk. A two-meter ridge is cut from the butt of a felled tree, which is split or sawn into bars, parallel to the run of the trunk and the direction of the wood fibers. After this, the blocks are hewn, resulting in boards 3.5-4 cm thick. The outer side of the board, facing the bark, is always used for the lower, sliding surface of the skis, and the butt part is used for bending the toes. After drying for at least a month, the board is shaped into a ski, then the nose of the ski is steamed in boiling water for half an hour, it must be taken into account that insufficient softening of the wood can lead to a break in the tip when it is bent, and excessive steaming leads to the formation of folds on the inner surface wear or cracks. The bend of the ski tip is made on a wooden, home-made template, and its curvature should be made somewhat steeper than the desired bend of the ski tip, since when removed from the template after a week of drying, they unbend by ten millimeters. Before removing the skis from the template, the lower part of the bend, for better fixation, is “roasted” over coals. After all this, the ski blanks are processed in accordance with the required dimensions, which must correspond to the weight of the hunter, but in any case, the height of the skis should not exceed the height of the owner. With loose snow, one kilogram of the hunter’s weight should account for approximately fifty square meters. centimeters of support, based on this it turns out that with a hunter’s weight of 70 kg, the ski support area should be equal to 3,500 square meters. cm, which is achieved by the following dimensions: ski length 160 cm, width 22 cm. Holes are drilled in the toes of the skis for towing them. Finished skis must be soaked in heated wood resin diluted with turpentine and tar.

There are three types of hunting skis: boot skis, camus skis and combined skis. Golitsy - skis not lined with camus. Before going hunting, the sliding surface of the loaches must be treated with a specially prepared ointment, for example, consisting of molten wax (three parts) and one part of stearin and fish oil. It is better to prepare special ointments designed for certain temperature conditions. The ointment used during a thaw or in slight frost (up to -10°C) consists of three parts paraffin, two parts brown wax and a small amount of tar. A frozen piece of this mixture is rubbed on the heated lower surface of the ski, then rubbed until shiny with a cloth. At lower temperatures, an ointment is used consisting of three parts wax, one part stearin, one part blubber (or fish oil) with the addition of a small amount of tar and rosin. In very severe frosts (below -30°C), it is good to lubricate skis with popular tar. The main disadvantage of golits is the difficulty of climbing uphill. Well-known techniques - herringbone or ladder climbing - are impossible in the dense taiga. To overcome a steep climb, you have to make large zigzags, which require a lot of effort and time. All this can be avoided by equipping the goiters with a simple device - brake plates. To do this, a plate the width of the ski and 15 cm long is cut out of three-millimeter aluminum. One end of it (the persistent one) is made rounded, the second is bent into a tube into which a thick, preferably stainless, wire is inserted, its ends are bent in the form of a bracket with loops at the ends , which are secured to the heel of the ski with an aluminum plate 4 cm long. On the heels of the skis, 16 cm from the edge, clamps are installed that secure the thrust plates when moving on flat terrain. When overcoming climbs, the plates are released from fixation and freely stretch along the ski track, without interfering with forward movement, but as soon as the skis go backwards, they rest against the snow with their lower end and hold the hunter in place.

The second device that eliminates the lack of skid marks is a brush made of coarse hair (bristles), for which the ski itself serves as a block. The brush is placed in front of the support platform and behind it. Bunches of brush hair are placed in relation to the sliding surface of the ski, to its heel at an angle of 45°. To make brushes, holes for them are made on the lower surface of the skis. The holes, which are best pierced with an awl, are placed in a checkerboard pattern. They should be conical with a diameter of 2 mm on the upper surface and 4 mm on the lower surface. To make the work easier, the holes can first be drilled with a two-millimeter drill, and then, to make them taper, treated with an awl made of four-millimeter wire. To ensure the same inclination of the holes, it is necessary to make a template.

To prevent the tufts of brush hair from bending too steeply, a recess is made opposite each hole at the back along the ski. After all the holes are ready, they need to be cleaned of burrs. Next, we proceed to the manufacture of brushes, for the construction of which bristles 7 cm long are prepared. A fishing line with a cross section of 1 mm is secured with a nail at one end on the upper surface of the ski at the front extreme hole, then the fishing line itself is inserted in the form of a loop from top to bottom and a bundle is placed in this loop stubble. The intended bend of the bristles on the loop is generously lubricated with glue, preferably epoxy, after which the free end of the fishing line is pulled upward, while the tuft of bristles fits tightly into the conical hole. Then the fishing line is threaded into the next hole and the whole operation is repeated again, and so on until the end, after which the second end of the fishing line is secured in the same way as the first. After the necessary drying, the hair on the brush is trimmed in a plane parallel to the plane of the ski, leaving tufts of hair no more than 15 mm. The puncture sites on the upper surface of the skis are covered with colorless varnish. If the skis converted in this way do not hold you on the slope, then either the slope is very steep, or the weight of the skier is high, and it is simply worth adding a few rows of beams. Came skis do not have the disadvantages of shaft skis. They provide speed of movement and stability in deep, loose snow and the ability to climb uphill at a normal pace. Kamus is the hard-haired part of the skin taken from the lower part of the legs of an elk, deer, or horse. According to most hunters, the best camus is considered to be horse camus; it is also called the most popular. Elk camus is considered the most durable, and the softest, non-squeaking camus is considered to be reindeer camus. Camus is also used by roe deer, musk deer, and deer. In coastal areas, seal skins are often used for these purposes. The camus is selected so that there is as little “transverse” hair as possible. To lighten the weight, the camus is flayed to an extremely thin thickness, after which it is sewn into one long strip with the pile directed in one direction. When installing the skin on skis, it is necessary to monitor the general direction of the hair, it is necessary that in the middle of the skin the hair lies parallel to the edges of the ski, otherwise when moving it will go to the side, in other words, “mow”. When attaching the camus to the skis, it is either nailed or sewn on and, finally, it can be glued on.

Hunters do not have a unanimous opinion on this matter. The camus is nailed starting from the toes of the skis, first along the “axis” with nails with a wide head, maintaining a distance of 5 cm between them. In the places where the camus joins, nails are nailed more often, and the sides of the camus are nailed in the same way. If some nails go right through the ski, it’s okay; when bent towards the heel of the ski, they hold the skin more securely.

You can sew on the kamus using varnish-coated grit. For strength, the edge of the camus is stitched with a vein. Before installation, the camus must be soaked in warm water. Then, every 10 cm (at the toe of the ski every 5 cm), two holes with a diameter equal to the thickness of the grit are drilled or pierced: one retreating from the edge of the bast by 10 mm, the second by 18 mm. Through these holes a thread is pulled, which is used to attract and tie the skin to the ski. The free end of the thread, sweeping the edge of the camus, goes to the next pair of holes, and the whole operation is repeated in a circle around the entire perimeter of the ski, starting from its toe. With this method of attaching the camus, it can be quickly replaced when it becomes unusable or worn out. This is difficult to do without damaging the skis if the skin is nailed down with small nails.

Most hunters believe that skis with a glued camus are stronger in bending, because all the strength is in the ceilings and glue. Before gluing the casing, the ski is coated with glue twice. After drying, a third layer of glue is applied and the wet casing is pulled onto the ski, after which it must be rolled with a roller in the direction of the hair until excess glue comes out and the casing is completely flattened. Then the ski is wrapped with a bandage or twine so that the skin on the sides adheres well and does not warp. After the necessary drying, the bandage (twine) is removed, and the excess camus at the edges is cut off with a sharp knife. Various adhesive compositions are used to glue the camus. These are both BF and epoxy-based glue, but the most preferable is wood glue with a small addition of acetic acid, which makes the glue water-resistant. For the summer, camus skis are tied with the sliding side inward with a spacer in the middle. To prevent damage to the skin by moths, you need to wrap your skis in newspaper soaked in kerosene.

The disadvantage of camus skis is that the camus gets wet and the skis become heavy and difficult to control. Therefore, many hunters make combination skis by gluing a narrow strip of camus to the sliding surfaces of skis, which is located in the middle, along the entire sliding surface. The width of the camus strip should be at least 8 cm, which ensures sufficient braking of the skis from sliding backwards when going uphill. The camus tape is glued as follows: glue is applied in an even layer to the surfaces to be glued, after which the camus strip is placed strictly in the middle of the sliding surface of the ski with the nap to the heel and pressed tightly until the glue dries completely. After gluing the camus strip, excess glue along its edges must be removed. The ends of the camus strip must be folded at the toe and heel onto the upper surface of the ski and secured with glue; gluing the camus strip directly to the sliding surface of the ski is allowed, but to improve performance, it is better to place it in a specially selected groove 2 mm deep and 80 mm wide.

In all the above-described options, kamus is used both dressed and undressed. You can make a kamus yourself. To do this, pour 10 liters of water into a wooden container, pour 1 kg of table salt into it and, taking special care, pour in 200 ml of sulfuric acid, mix it all thoroughly. The kamus is placed in the resulting solution for three days, after which it is taken out and nailed with nails, stretched on a board to dry, with the inside up. A kamus made in this way is not afraid of dampness. And one more thing: when working with a kamus, it is necessary to correctly process it at the joints, for which, at the junction of the kamus, both ends of it are cut to “no”, and the hair itself must also be trimmed there.

And the last important detail is the fastenings. On the one hand, they must hold the leg securely, on the other, for example, when falling or if necessary to quickly get off the skis, they must almost automatically release the legs. The bindings are installed in such a way that the heel of the ski when moving gives a greater draft than the toe. To do this, find the center of gravity of the ski and draw a transverse line through it, then, retreating 40 mm from the toe, draw a second line parallel to the first, which will be the line where the fastening begins. It is best to make the support platform for the foot from multi-layer plywood, select a groove for the loop from below and glue it to the ski with waterproof glue; for greater reliability, you can also screw it with screws. Under the foot itself, it is necessary to stick microporous rubber, which, by compressing and unclenching, prevents the snow from being compressed under the foot. If rubber is not available, you can use a birch bark plate, and glue it only along the edges. Fastening straps are best made from well-smoked elk leather; it does not get wet or stretch, as happens with rawhide, which becomes limp from dampness. You can also use canvas straps. There are many methods of fastening, I will give some of them.

First. The main strap passes through the toe of the shoe just behind the toes, and the heel strap is attached to it, which, on the leading foot, crosses twice in the instep (double figure eight). The tension of the strap should allow you to pull your leg out from under the main fastening belt at any time. On the second ski, the toe of the foot goes deeper under the main strap, the back strap fits the shoe more loosely and crosses once.

The second effective fastening method is that the heel strap is not attached to the main strap, but to a metal hook attached to the front of the ski pad, or to the front of the ski itself. With this method of fastening, the foot gets tired and cold less, since the main belt practically does not carry the load and does not squeeze the foot in the shoe.

Sometimes the bindings are lined with special stocking bags made of thick material, which are put on the legs together with the skis and tied just below the knees. With this method of fastening, the snow does not get under your feet and does not creak, thereby ensuring quiet running, but there is no opportunity to quickly get off the skis.

The simplest and at the same time reliable fastening has been known since ancient times. There is no heel strap here at all; the whole secret is that a boss is sewn onto the toe of a felt boot using tarred grit (it can be made from the boot of another felt boot). It is enough to raise the heel of your foot higher, slide the toe of the felt boot with the boss under the main belt and that’s it. When moving through deep, loose snow, some hunters tie ropes with one end to the holes in the toes of the skis and the other under the knees, thus freeing the front halves of the skis from falling under the snow.

In this article presented to your attention, I tried to cover the rich experience of hunters in the Urals, Siberia and the Far East. I apologize in advance if this came out a little awkward. With great respect to all brother hunters.

Leonid Mamonov,
game biologist

It is believed that, unlike plastic ones, wooden touring skis absolutely do not need any additional lubrication. They say that tarring perfectly protects them from water, a paraffin primer provides the necessary slip, and homemade know-how protects them from sticking - silver ointment. This is not entirely true. If the ski trip will take place at low temperatures and there are many long climbs along the route, then the kickback of wooden skis can cause a lot of trouble, exhausting hikers, reducing the speed of the group.

So, in this article we will talk about how to lubricate wooden skis and how this procedure is carried out. We bring to your attention instructions for lubricating wooden skis. By default, it is assumed that the skis have been pre-tarred and have been left in a warm place for at least a day.

Useful articles:

Lubricating wooden skis: applying the “base”

You need to prime your ski in advance, at home. To do this, either use special paraffin or a paraffin (not stearic) candle, preferably a tablet candle in a metal cup (also called a floating one), because the paraffin content in it is higher.

• Before lubricating wooden skis with ointment, rub them with paraffin and iron them using something hot, for example, a spatula heated on the stove.

• Remove with a scraper (a special scraper) any unabsorbed excess melted, smeared paraffin.

• “Wax” your ski regularly, before each trip to the snow. This is a good remedy for lipstick. But it’s even better to use “homemade” silver ointment for this.

“Serebryanka” sticks well to skis without preheating (unlike paraffin). Since it is gray in color, you can clearly see where the skis are coated with it. Another advantage of “serebryanka” is its resistance to abrasion by snow.

Ointment for wooden skis “serebryanka”. Recipe.

1. Melt paraffin or a paraffin candle in a metal container that you don’t mind throwing away (a tin can).
2. Add, stirring, aluminum powder (silver powder) in a ratio of 1:2. Add a little ski resin left over from resinizing the skis. It will soften the ointment, which is especially important if you apply it to your skis in the cold.
3. Pour the mixture into a pre-prepared plastic cup that holds the temperature of boiling water. After half an hour or an hour the ointment will harden.
4. Cut the cup with scissors. Ready!

When the aluminum hardens, it will settle a little and on one side the block will turn out to be grayer. This part of it can be used in warm weather, and the reverse part (with the resulting recess) can be used during frost.

Useful articles:

Dmitry Zykov.

Science and life // Illustrations

Science and life // Illustrations

Science and life // Illustrations

When and where a person first got on skis and raced down the nearest hill on them is not known for certain. But with a high degree of probability it can be argued that the first skiers were hunters. It was not very easy for them to wander all day long in search of prey in deep snow, and they were not able to move quickly. So hunters began to come up with various devices in order not to get stuck in the snow.

Probably the first skis were snowshoes - flat, oblong platforms woven from branches, reminiscent of the bottom of a basket. It is impossible to slide on such a thing, and walking is uncomfortable. But still, on the dense snow, my feet, shod in snowshoes, did not sink. It’s worse if the snow is loose, it’s easy to get stuck in it, but hard to get out. But hunters are a smart people, and one of them thought of covering their snowshoes with animal skin, and not just plain skin, but kamus - this is part of the skin of an elk or deer, taken from a leg. The fur on it is very dense and durable, adjacent to the skin, and the hairs point in one direction. It turned out that snowshoes covered with camus can be used to roll down a hill and climb it, because on the descent the camus slips, and on the ascent it rests on the snow.

However, there were not enough kamus for everyone, and it was a pity for the deer and elk. The hunters had to come up with other ways to glide through the snow. It is not known exactly when they got on the sliding skis. In any case, the earliest rock carvings of skiers date back to the 3rd century BC, and the first mentions of skis and skiers are found in the Scandinavian sagas of the 8th-9th centuries.

Over time, hunters began to have wooden skis, at first straight, short and wide, then more similar to modern ones - relatively narrow and longer. Then skis would evolve faster. Their toes became bent, soft fastenings appeared in the form of belts, and then hard fastenings with special ski boots appeared.

Just some 20-30 years ago, almost all skis were wooden. To protect the wood from moisture (it appears not only from melted snow, but also simply because condensation forms on cold skis in a warm room), the skis were painted on top and resinized on the bottom. Now wooden skis have been replaced by skis made of plastic and combined ones - made of plastic and wood. Plastic skis do not get wet and glide better. For their manufacture today they use not only plastic, but also composite materials, alloys, and wood of various species.

Some ski enthusiasts believe that there is no need to do anything at all with combination and plastic skis - just get up and go! This is not true. Unlike wooden skis, plastic skis really do not require any sanding or tarring. However, new plastic skis must be waxed. To do this, rub a clean, dry sliding surface of the ski with a special ski paraffin (you can buy it in sports stores or order it online), then use a special ski iron or a very heated knife blade to evenly distribute the paraffin over the entire surface. The heated paraffin melts and fills all the pores in the plastic. When it has cooled, the excess is removed with a plastic scraper, and the surface is polished with a special rub or a hard nylon brush. After this comes the turn of the ski wax.

The first ski waxes appeared a hundred years ago. Before them, lard was used to make skis glide better and less snow stick to them. Now we have much more choice.

Modern ski waxes are divided into three groups. The first, very important one, is the soil. On the ground, the main ointment lasts well and for a long time, but without primer it can completely “slide off” in 3-4 hours of riding. The second group is ointments for gliding. They provide a minimum coefficient of friction between the sliding surface of the ski and the ski track. They are used, as a rule, to lubricate alpine skis and cross-country skis for skating. The third group is ointments for adhesion. They perform two tasks at once: on the one hand, they provide good gliding, on the other hand, when pushed, they “catch” onto the ski track. That is why professional skiers use them for classic skiing, and amateurs almost always, because you can’t really run on a regular forest track with skating.

Ointments are also distinguished by consistency. And although this division is largely arbitrary, it is worth remembering that solid ointments are designed for dry frosty weather, semi-solid - for temperatures around zero, and liquid - for temperatures above zero. The temperature range, and sometimes the snow condition for which the ointment is intended, is indicated on the label. For an ordinary ski trip, this information is enough.

How to properly wax your skis? Let's start with the fact that before a long hike, skis need to be treated with ground paraffin. It is worth doing this at the beginning of spring, when the weather is frosty in the morning and the snow is very hard. For normal, even winter weather, soft fresh ski tracks and a short walk, it is not necessary to prime your skis.

The ointment, as we have already said, is applied to the clean and dry sliding surface of the ski in a thin, even layer and rubbed thoroughly. For classic skiing, the toe and heel of the skis are lubricated with ointment or paraffin for gliding, and the cargo area (30-45 cm in the middle part of the ski) is lubricated with ointment for traction.

If you have skis with notches (“hooks” on the sliding surface of the loading area) - there are many of these on sale now - then they practically do not require ointment for grip. However, in warm weather or on an icy track, the notches cannot cope with the recoil, so even such skis have to be lubricated. By the way, the idea of ​​making notches on skis goes back to the kamus.

When already in the first meters of the ski track it becomes clear that the skis are giving back, the first thing you can do is add a little grip ointment to the loading area. If this is not enough, slightly increase the area of ​​application of the ointment towards the toe of the ski. If this does not completely eliminate recoil, add a little ointment to the cargo area, designed for warmer weather - 2-4 ° C higher than the main ointment (a prudent skier always has ointment with him). Even if the skis glide a little worse, there will be no recoil and the walk will not turn into flour.

Details for the curious

How to tar wooden skis

To prepare wooden skis for the winter season, they need to be tarred. In addition to the fact that resin protects wood from moisture, ointments and paraffins adhere better to a tarred surface.

First of all, we buy special ski resin at a sports store. One tube is enough for a pair of skis. We use two tin cans to make a water bath (see picture). Heat the ski resin in a water bath. Next, take a regular iron, carefully warm up the sliding surface of the ski and lubricate it with hot resin. To ensure the resin is better absorbed, iron the ski. When the first layer of resin dries, apply the second, and then the third. The tarred surface should have a thick dark brown color.

Sometimes, to tar the skis, they are heated over an open fire - over a gas stove or blowtorch. So, under no circumstances should you do this! Not only is it dangerous, but the resin also partially burns on fire and soot is formed, which significantly impairs gliding.

It so happened that after reading this article, our readers began to ask me a variety of questions not only about lubricants, but also about skis and ski poles. I try to answer all these questions within my competence. In my search for an answer, sometimes I call the best experts in the country in their field and they help me give you the right answer. If, after reading this article and all the answers, you still have questions, please write to me. skisport@mail. ru, I will definitely answer them.

Ivan Isaev,

Editor-in-chief of the magazine "Skiing"

Master of Sports of the USSR in cross-country skiing

And now, in fact, the letter itself from our reader.

Please consult. I'm going on a ski trip in February. For two weeks. The question arose of how to prepare the skis. Wooden skis, Forest skis. Initially, when I bought them, I impregnated them with Marathon XXI (formerly Visti) paraffin. I warmed it up with a hairdryer and the paraffin was well absorbed. And I treated it to suit the weather with the same series. Didn't resin.

Most likely, this will not be possible during the hike. Old books advise tarring. I'm thinking, what should I do with them? Will the resin lie on top of the paraffin? Or soak them in “cold” paraffin along the entire length to make them glide, and apply them under the cargo area depending on the weather? Or sand it and just tar it?

Sincerely, Glekov Evgeniy.

* * *

Evgeniy, you asked a fantastically interesting question that has puzzled me and many of my skiing friends whom I called in search of an answer. The fact is that I have tarred a lot of wooden skis in my life. And it’s impossible to count how many paraffinized plastic ones there are. But to paraffin wooden ones... This (just don’t be offended, please) is the same as harnessing a horse to a car.

In general, you have asked a problem... But the general verdict (after consultation with friends) is as follows:

1. The best solution for you would still be to “go broke” and buy plastic skis intended for hiking in virgin lands. They will not swell, as will inevitably happen with wooden skis, especially if there is a thaw. They have metal edges, which means they will not have rolled edges. Finally, they won’t break in the most inopportune place, as can easily happen with wooden skis. Buy, for example, these:

2. However, it is clear that you may not have the money to buy skis, but you still want to go hiking. Therefore, if we return directly to your question, it seems to us that it is possible to wax wooden skis. But something tells me that the resin will still stick to the ski better (in fact, forever - I know from my own experience), but the paraffin will “leave” from the ski over time. Although, it is possible that from the point of view of hydrophobic (water-repellent) properties, paraffin will still be more effective than resin for some period of time (we are talking, apparently, not about years, months and weeks, but about days). But, in general, I honestly admitted to you that my own experience in this area, both for me and for all my skiing friends, turned out to be zero, don’t blame me.

So, the options for solving the problem in order of preference:

A) buy new plastic skis;

B) paraffin the ends and coat the block with ointment;

C) sand the skis with fine sandpaper and then thoroughly impregnate them with resin. After this, the ski can be lubricated with ointment along its entire length: in the middle (under the block) with weather-appropriate ointment, at the ends with colder ointment.