Regluing Skins

No matter how careful you are with your skins, sooner or later there will be a build up of dirt, or a loss of glue, and it's time to strip off the old glue and apply some new glue.

We don't currently offer this as a service - it is time consuming and a bit fiddly, but is generally something that touring skiers accept as one of the off season tasks that keep us skiing in the winter.

There are a few videos showing ways of cleaning skins and reapplying glue, but we think they tend to make it look more difficult than it is.

Here are the steps we follow:

First buy some glue from Backcountry!

1. choose a well ventilated area to work in

2. secure one end of the skin to a work bench

3. warm the old glue using a hair drier or wall paper stripper (the hotter the air source, the more care is needed)

4. using a wall paper scraper (or any right angled scraper) scrape of the warmed old glue, a little at a time

5. apply new glue (either from a tube, or using iron on paper backed rolls of glue) - if you are ironing on glue, do make sure that the iron is hot enough to make the glue stick - and if using a tube of glue, hang the skins in a clean well ventilated area for a minimum of 24 hours to allow the glue to cure

6. ideally using cheat sheets, carefully pack way the newly glued skins until it is time to go skiing!

And some video tutorials:

Stripping dirt without removing all the glue - using an iron & brown paper

Stripping the glue with a blow torch!