Before I start I want to say everything I first learned came from the Grand PoohBah Greg at
http://www.woodenskis.com and I added to my knowledge through trial, trail, and error over the past several years of skiing wood skis.
Greg at Woodenskis does a great job collecting, evaluating, and shipping the skis he has in his inventory. They are graded by condition and flex, and he removes a lot of unknowns from the equation of buying wood skis online. Also, his prices are very competitive, fair, and proceeds go to various ski museums.
Chapter 1: Choosing your ski
TYPE OF SKI:
For those that aspire to ski wooden skis, you must first CHOOSE your ski. This is easier said than done, as the supply is limited and those that are available are in varying degrees of health. Wooden XC skis can really be broken down to into three categories: Track/sprint skis, general touring skis that fit in a track but will get you down a snowmobile trail also, and backcountry touring skis that barely fit in a track, if at all, but provide stability and float through the woods.
GENERALLY/ON AVERAGE the dimensions of these skis run:
Track/Sprint: 55-50-53
General Touring (Tur-Langrenn): 60-50-55
Touring (Tur-Modell): 67-57-62
Asnes also made a ski called the Veteran and it was a beefy, heavy woodie at 76-75-70 (I think- from an old magazine article). A super-tur modell if you will. Beautiful ski.
Here are 4 examples of the above laid out. There is an Asnes Tur (wide touring ski), Holmenkollen/Asnes Tur-Langrenn (general touring) then a Bonna 2400 (wide touring ski- this one is the wood base version with lignostone edges), and an Eggen track ski. The two on the right are my wife's skis at 190cm.
SIZE OF SKI:
When you have decided which ski you want, you should think about size. Now, I keep things very simple and choose one size across the disciplines. Wood ski are funny little things that have some life to them and they can be slightly adapted to you. However, I generally add 20cm to a person's height to get the ski length and this rule-of-thumb works out pretty well. You can adapt it to yourself if you're above average weight or less than average weight. My wife is 170cm tall and she skis 190cm skis. I am 188cm tall and ski 210cm woodies. Add or subtract as you see fit for either weight or usage. My wife and I ski on relatively gentle rolling terrain, if we were in demanding hills we might size down, especially my wife who's skills are slightly less than mine, doesn't enjoy the magic of waxing as much, and also she is light for her height.
However, there is a complication to all this due to the relative age of the woodie stock and the amount they have been used and that's....
CONDITION OF SKI:
In the decades that have gone by since your ski was built many things could have happened to it that affects its performance. That's one reason why it is difficult to buy wood skis on the internet sight unseen as you can be really rolling the dice on what kind of life the ski has left.
Camber:
You want good camber. Back in December I went to the local swap and found three pairs of wood skis. Two of the three were very, very soft, as in dead skis with limited camber. Easy to squeeze together. Floppy noodles. Sad. They were skied to death or stored badly in the intervening years. Only one pair (the wood/orange Eggens in the above picture) had life and camber in them. Oodles of camber as it turns out, the ski is like new, it was lovingly cared for, so much camber that my wife has to extend her wax far forward, but she is rewarded in a very fast, sexy ski.
Many people selling wood skis on eBay are selling them as decoration, something that is going to be killed by a stake through their heart as they are nailed unceremoniously to a wall like a trophy animal. Also, the sellers are not skiers and they don't know how to store, care for, or evaluate skis, especially camber. If you are looking at a soft ski, size up. If it has good camber, stick to my formula I have listed above.
Edges:
Many, but not all, wood skis come with lignostone edges. This is a hardened plasticized wood that protects the edges of your skis from being worn round over their life of use. They will not help you edge across east coast boilerplate, but they will help you snowplow and bounce off rocks. This edge can sometimes come delaminated especially up at the tip and tail. You can also splice and replace it if you have an extra sacrificial ski. It can also be a pain in the ass. A little delam is now almost inevitable across the the remaining skis in this world, but a little glue can keep the water out and keep things together. Avoid skis with large sections of lignostone falling away from the ski.
Tails:
This is the most important thing to inspect, as this is a very common problem and often the lead up to spectacular failures. People have a propensity to stick their skis in the snow tails down. This led to many wood skis having their tails damaged which led to water intrusion. Additionally, years of storage in a cement-floor basement or garage is also a conduit for moisture. Inspect the tails! Long vertical splits up the ski are to be avoided! Delamination of the layer horizontally must be determined by the buyer if it's fixable or not. A ski can be put under enormous stress especially in deep powder snow, you don't want a ski to explode on you miles from the trailhead (ask me how I know).
This is what heartbreak looks like... my beautiful, fast, stable, Madshus Touring blown to pieces:
If you are purchasing on the internet from some random guy and there are no tail pictures, ask for them! Top, sides, bottom.
All my skis have a little tail damage but nothing that I can't fix or control. I studiously avoid any ski that have large problem areas in the tail. When skiing I do not jam the tails into a snowbank. My skis are stored in my basement with a non-permeable layer under the tails. In wintertime they are in the garage and I keep them on a plastic boot thing to keep them off the concrete.
Next:
Preparing the ski for use- pine tar and waxing and you
Storage- blocking and shaping the ski for next year