Ancient Romans used the phrase ab ovo usque ad mala (“from egg to apples”) to describe the complete course or duration of a process or event. The idiom refers to the full sweep of the traditional Roman meal, which would begin with eggs and end with apples, or some other fruit. If you do not have an erstwhile Classics degree like this reporter you may be more familiar with the phrase “from soup to nuts,” which describes the same thing, but in American. The latter term is well over a century old by this point, but is also in English; it may not be in a “hip” argot that “trends on TikTok,” but at least you can understand it.
All of which is to say: This episode is an eggs-to-apples, soup-to-nuts masterclass in ski preparation with Zach Caldwell, longtime proprietor of Caldwell Sport. Note that I did not say “ski waxing”; Zach Caldwell does not do something so plebeian as to “wax” a ski. (Actually, he literally does precisely this, all the damn time, but bear with me, I’m making a point here.) Zach Caldwell divines a ski’s properties, thinks about what he knows about local ski conditions and snow characteristics historically, cross-references this with snow conditions this hour/day/week/fortnight/decade, considers the genealogy of this particular ski, casts some runes, consults a nearby haruspex, and only then starts testing paraffins.
… or maybe you just want to be told that you only need to hotwax your skis every 100 kilometers’ worth of skiing, and can get away with liquid paraffins most of the rest of the time. Caldwell will tell you that, too.
Seriously, though, there is a heck of a lot of good information here, and it in fact truly does take a potentially opaque and offputting subject and present it in a simple and straightforward manner. Moreover, it is assiduously well organized (rough table of contents here, if you’d like it). Hat tip to host Fast Big Dog for that one; there’s a lot of unseen work that goes into making this all flow so effortlessly. (Much like ski training vs. ski racing, amirite.)
Caldwell starts with ski production quality. Then grinding. Then waxing skis and saturating the base material, with a brief but relevant excursion into the use case for a heat box. Then paraffin application, including best practices on how to iron. Then brushing (manual). Then brushing (roto). You may sense a theme here: start at the beginning, proceed to the end, and then stop.
But there’s more! Glide waxing for racing. Classic waxing for racing. How frequently you should do all of this. How infrequently you can get away with actually doing all of this. How to wax for local races. How to wax for a race you have to travel to. Heck, how to bundle and package your skis for transit so that they will be unharmed when you arrive at your destination race.
In short, if this episode doesn’t tell you everything you need to know to wax your skis better and more informed-ly than you currently do — not only how to do this, but also, crucially, why you should do this, and what you should consider when doing so — then you either didn’t listen very carefully, or you have made an appearance here. (Both options here are plausible; no judgment either way.)
But perhaps you would like some visual instruction as well? Reader, you have come to the right place! The appendix to this post contains a compilation of relevant and instructive videos. Watch the videos as well as listen to the podcast and you will be unstoppable.
It appears, and I only realized this while writing this blurb, that half of these videos are unlisted and were uploaded to YouTube only recently, suggesting that Zach essentially prepared them for use in complementing this episode. Which is… awesome, actually; I can’t thank him enough for his passion and dedication, let alone his generosity and willingness to help teach others.
Without further ado:
This episode is embedded above. You can also listen to it on Apple Podcasts here, on Spotify here, or anywhere else you get your podcasts (here is our RSS feed). As always, podcast content does not reflect the views of either the Nordic Insights editorial side or its advertisers.
This episode, once more, is not short. You can find an auto-generated outline of it here, and an auto-generated transcript here. I actually find the first link, the outline and summary, quite helpful; it comes with time stamps, which lets it serve as a useful table of contents to a two-plus-hour opus. I’m not sure how many people out there would prefer to skim a 20,000-word rough transcript rather than just listen to the show, but the machines did that for me as well, so refer to that if it is of benefit to you. I have done almost no work to clean up this document, fyi.
We increasingly sound like a real podcast now, which is legitimately exciting to me. The substance has always been there — this podcast is Fast Big Dog’s baby, and he’s worked hard to bring it to life for your listening enjoyment — but I like to think that we now have the audio quality to match it. This emergent competence on the technical side is due to (a) an extremely generous listener who donated some quality recording equipment to the cause (but who wishes to remain anonymous), and (b) audio engineer Nathan Shuttleworth, who is doing fine work here.
Thank you, as always, for your support. And while we already have quite a few questions lined up for Caldwell: Part III: Mailbag Episode, we will never turn down more questions if you have them. Leave a comment at the bottom of this article, or email podcast (at) nordicinsights.news, with anything you want to know. Questions may be about skis, ski wax, ski preparation, or anything else skiing-related, with “related” here interpreted, shall we say, broadly.
— Gavin Kentch
Appendix: Instructional videos
About heat:
Iron application:
Liquid wax application:
Roto tools:
On brushes:
Even more on brushes: rotational speed and fleece length for roto brushes:
Nerd files: On classic kick zones:
