Triage: Cosmetic, Repairable, or Terminal
Most damage sorts cleanly into three buckets. Cosmetic — topsheet chips, shallow base scratches, light edge rust — affects nothing but resale photos and can wait for the next tune. Repairable — base gouges, core shots, minor edge cracks, small delaminations, worn-out bases — is what repair benches exist for, at prices far below replacement. Terminal — a broken or creased core, edge torn out along a real length, delamination across the ski's width, a board that has lost its camber — means the gear is done, and money spent on it is wasted. When in doubt, a shop will triage for free in thirty seconds.
Base Damage: Gouges and Core Shots
Scratches that catch a fingernail but stay in the black base material are routine: melted P-Tex fills them for $10-25, or a few dollars of DIY candle. A core shot — damage deep enough to expose the wood or composite core — needs prompt professional attention, because a wet core swells and delaminates the ski from inside. Shops cut back to clean material and weld in new base, typically $20-50 per shot depending on size. Ride a core shot in wet snow for a week and a $30 repair becomes a dead ski; tape over it and get it to a bench.
Edge Damage: Burrs, Cracks, and Blowouts
Burrs and dings from rocks feel like the ski catching randomly; a shop removes them with a stone and file in minutes, usually inside a standard tune. A cracked edge that remains seated can often be stabilized and skied for seasons. An edge blowout — a section torn away from the ski — is the judgment call: short sections away from the contact zone can be repaired with epoxy and screws or a section replacement ($40-90), while long tears or damage underfoot where edge grip lives usually are not worth it. Bent edges from rail or rock impacts can frequently be coaxed back if the base beneath is intact.
Delamination and Water Damage
When topsheet or base layers separate — often at the tip or tail after a hard impact, or anywhere water has crept in — the fix window is early. A small, dry delamination gets injected with epoxy and clamped overnight ($25-60) and holds for years. A large one, or one that squelches when squeezed, has water in the core, and gluing wet layers merely postpones the funeral. Prevention costs nothing: dry your gear indoors after wet days, fix base and edge breaches promptly, and never store skis in a bag with wet bases against wet bindings all summer.
The Full Shop Tune, Decoded
A standard machine tune ($40-80) covers base grind to flatten and refresh structure, edge sharpening to a set bevel, minor P-Tex fills, and hot wax — effectively a reset to near-new running condition, worth doing once or twice a season for gear that gets used. Stone grinding adds precise structure for wet or cold snow. Binding work is priced separately: adjustment to a new boot ($15-30), full inspection and release test ($25-50), and remounting for a new hole pattern ($40-70 plus plugs). Turnaround runs same-day midweek to several days at peak; drop gear off before the trip, not the night lifts open.
DIY Versus the Bench, and When to Retire Gear
Sensible home jobs: waxing, P-Tex on small clean gouges, edge deburring with a diamond stone, and side-edge touch-ups with a guide. Leave to the shop: anything touching the core, base grinds, edge replacement, structural epoxy work, and all binding mounting and testing — the tools and the liability both live there. Retire skis or boards when repair costs cross half the price of equivalent used replacements, when the camber is gone, or when the same failure keeps returning. Shops offering repair services are filterable on WinterStores, and reviews reliably reveal which bench in town does honest triage versus upselling.