I brought out the old wooden Majerajah water ski yesterday hoping to bring out the shine, and I did with not a lot of work, here's what I learned so far.
First, this Maha was a beautiful ski and Bob Maher's company still makes wooden skis after 50 years that are competitive in ski racing. They still sell slalom skis that look quite similar to mine.
Though the company said on its Web site, a lot of its ski sales are to old-time skiers for wall decorations.
I'm not that type of guy I want to ski this thing again.
I grew up waterskiing and my family had this old Maha for as long as I can remember, but we really only skied it as an exhibition, to see if it still works. I'd always favored modern plastics, fiberglass, graphite and composite skis with two boots and all that.
It wasn't until I got into, then became bored with wakeboarding that I really started skiing and appreciated the sport, but still I'd probably skied this Maha hundreds of times.
After about an hour's work with a chemical restorer, I felt it looked well enough to ski again, but I was torn between fully stripping the finish and starting over or being happy with what I had. I leaned toward the easy one and good thing.
Maherajah's Web site, mahaskis.com, recommends not restoring an old ski because refinishing it could weaken it. However the site did recommend re-sealing chipped areas and bare wood with an exterior urethane-based product.
In Maha's words ... "We do not recommend refinishing an older ski. If the ski has been badly damaged or neglected we don't recommend using it. If you intend on using it, you can touch up the spots where bare wood is exposed by lightly sanding the spot and applying an exterior urethane based product, isolating the bad spots with masking tape.
We have found that refinishing a ski makes it thinner, more flexible, and more likely to break. Old skis are already more brittle than their newer counterparts."
Well from here on out I'll follow those guidelines - more or less.
After more than 50 years, Maha must know a thing or two about wood skis.
After years of baking in the sun and a bit of time spent in the oily bilge compartment of our boat after it sank, the formerly beautiful ski had seen better days.
So I dug it out from my grandmother's basement over the weekend and last night and tried, unbelieving, a minimal restoration of the ski's finish.
I had some restore-a-finish, or some kind of wood-stain restorer sitting around from a previous failed attempt with wood working.
A dab of the chemical on some fine steel wool and a couple strokes of it on the ski in an inconspicuous area yielded amazing results to my consternation.
The restorer is a dark walnut finish which is wrong, but it was what I had and there was no way it was going to come out worse so I dove in.
Before I really hit it, I wanted to document before and after progress so I could tell how it measured up.
Excitedly I started snapping pictures of the beat-up ski with my cell phone in my dark garage.
Then, with rubber gloves on I started vigorously rubbing the magic restoration juice on the ski with fine steel wool.
Then becoming evermore brave, I brought out the screw gun and took the bindings off.
Taking a break from the fumes, I tore into the bindings, spraying them down with silicone spray and wiping them with a rag made them look much better. The same fine, steel wool with a bit of polish on the stainless binding hold-downs brought out the shine.
Now with the ski, sans bindings, I really got with it and scrubbed down the whole dang thing. I masked off a small sticker reading 3.5 near the Maha logo and the rubber fin cap and went over the ski again, wiping off the excess juice as I went.
It started looking well again in little time but the torn rubber tip had to go. Using a dedicated, shop hairdryer I loosened the grip of the glue and pulled it off and started to work on the adhesive - gnarly stuff and I've still got more work to go.
Then I lightly sanded the splintered edges and gave it more juice.
Next step, order a new rubber tip boot - $24 from mahaskis.
Then some urethane, assembly and "HIT IT!"
My minimalist restoration has become more involved.
