Around this time of year our rental and tech shop manager Gordie and his team are wrapping up the rental fleet maintenance. You should be thinking about digging your equipment out of your garage, basement, or storage locker to bring it in for a full tune-up. Chicopee’s tech shop will start accepting equipment drop-offs on December 15, 2021.
Read on to learn more about how we prepare our rental equipment for use each year!
Every fall, our rental & tech shop manager along with a few staff members take the time to check, tune, wax, and hand scrape each and every ski and snowboard in the rental shop. Here’s a little bit about the process:
- Each piece of equipment is thoroughly inspected to check for cracks in the base and along the edges, DIN setting legibility and damage to the bindings, and to ensure that the bindings qualify in the NSSRA Indemnification List.
- Skis and snowboards then get a base grind and sharpen using our Wintersteiger machine.
- After the base grind and sharpening, each and every ski and snowboard is hand waxed. Wax lets the equipment glide better on snow, and it also helps seal the base of the equipment to protect it from drying out.
- Ski bindings are removed, cleaned, inspected, re-greased, and re-installed.
- Once the wax has absorbed and cooled, every ski and snowboard is hand scraped, and placed back into the rental shop, ready for use!
During this process we also take a full inventory of all of the rental equipment, checking for damages or items that need to be retired. Chicopee adds new skis, boards, boots, helmets, and bindings to the rental fleet each year to ensure that demand is met, and all of our equipment is safe to use.
Remember that caring for your equipment properly will extend the lifetime of your gear! Pre-season is a great time to take it in to a professional for a full tune-up.