Red Creek Buyer's Guide

Red Creek has long been known for making the best ski waxing brushes on the market! Their factory in central Sweden makes everything with care and precision. When you see a wax tech with a Red Creek brush, you should know that they truly care about the performance of a ski. They also have some of the best performing waxes and structure tools! When these three areas come together, the skis you wax will be nigh unbeatable. From their famous blue nylon, to their diamond scrapers; Red Creek provides exactly what you need! 

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Hand Brushes

Nylon

Red Creek has a very popular blue nylon brush! Soft, long-ish, fine bristles are perfect for finishing your race skis with any top coat. The blue is more universal of a brush, a great option for liquids. The other great finishing brush for racing is their white nylon. Its shorter bristles are better for transferring the power you put in your brush strokes down into the ski base. This brush is very soft to the touch, though the bristles are firm due to their length. The hard white nylon, and the 2 small coloured nylons are more recreational skier focused. Harder, stiffer bristles on a more affordable brush. The red and green mini brushes are the same nylon; the only difference is the colour. They are perfect for throwing in your pocket for mid-outing touch ups! All the hard nylon options are still built to the Red Creek standard though they don't quite have a place on XC racing wax bench, unless you are working with very hard waxes. The fine soft white and hard white nylons also come in larger, oval options for alpine waxers.

Horsehair

Only 2 brushes in this category: a standard horsehair, and an industry standard horsehair! Horsehair brushes are perfect for removing residual wax from a ski base after scraping and metal brushing. They work quite well on colder, harder waxes to go deep into the structure. On the gold brush, the ultrafine steel strands mixed into the horsehair help to reach down into racing ski structure to get them ready for a top coat. On powders and colder waxes, this brush works well as the finisher as well!

Metal

By far the brushes that Red Creek are known for! Their expansive collection of steel brushes has exactly what you want. They are also quite proud of their brass brush which has the perfect bristles size and stiffness! They have several different steel brushes of different styles and prices. To break down the options, there is coarseness of the bristles, and style of bristles. The finer the bristle, the deeper the brush cleans into structure. You may want the finest, highest quality brush for your top of the line XC race skis in which you would pick up the ultrafine steel gold brush. You may also just want the coarsest brush possible for getting a fresh wax job off your snowboard in which you would go for the brutal steel. Every brush has their place! You will likely choose a middle-tier brush for affordability and generality. The two major types of steel brushes are curled and straight. Curled steels are a little softer of a feel, giving a bit of cushion when running them on a ski base.They make an ideal choice for after scraping. Straight steels are a great option for cleaning. They go deeper into the ski base structure and remove old wax and contaminants!

Combi

Red Creek has 2 combi hand brushes: a recreational option, and a racing option. Both have part of the brush designed for straight after scraping glide waxes off, and a part for polishing right before you go for a ski! The fine brass/hard nylon is probably the best recreational combi brush on the market!

Roto Brushes

Nylon

If you think it is excessive when a brand has more than 2 nylon options, you should avert your eyes to the Red Creek line. Six different options for any need! New in 2025 is the gold nylon which is a world cup racing ready polishing brush. Longer hairs than the famous blue nylon, the gold is great for liquids! The blue nylon will still be a great middle option between the gold and white nylons! Those 3 will cover your every need on top racing skis! The remaining 3 nylon rotos are a little more focused towards lower-tier racing. The grey nylon is a coarser version of the white nylon. Short hairs for harder waxes. The 2 black options are more general brushes, and the hardest of the Red Creek rotos; however, nowhere near as hard as the white nylon hand brush. Choose your bristle length for liquids vs solids. Fine white, grey, and black nylons are also available in 200mm and 300mm brushes for alpine waxing!

Horsehair

Only 2 options for the Red Creek roto horsehair brushes: 4mm bristles vs 6mm bristles. Race team waxers often prefer a bit of a stiffer feel with the horsehair, though it is a preference that Red Creek offers both sides of!

Metal

These brushes are the best of the best! These brushes are very unlikely to be needed by the everyday skier. These are needed by race teams from varying levels of elite-ness (and/or budget). It may be hard to justify to your local club's board that you need a $400 roto brush, but when you take one pass with these brushes and they look the smoothest they ever have, you will want to justify a second one as well! New in 2025 is the Sprio Mix brush which is a finishing brush spiralled with ultrafine steel.

Other

A few other options from Red Creek that race team waxers will need! High quality cork and felt for heating in rub-on waxes and liquids, as well as a velcro roto brush to attach their fibertex pads to for cleaning.

Combi

Mix and match your favourites from Red Creek all on one brush. Most are 140mm brushes meaning you get 70mm of each brush; the perfect size for XC! There is the holy grail of combi brushes as well with the 200mm triple combi! It comes with Ultrafine steel, horsehair, and blue nylon! Everything that you need for fast racing skis!

Rilling Tools

Linear

Linear rilling tools are some of the most popular! They help to carry water straight back as your are skiing. They are often used in combination with other styles of rill tools. The linear will normally only go on the tail section of the ski. Linear 3mm is quite aggressive and will be in your ski base until they get stone ground. Make sure this riller only gets used of skis for wet conditions! The tighter the pattern, the less moisture the snow contains.

Christmas Tree

Christmas Tree pattern rilling tools are one of the most popular options. These patterns divert moisture evenly to either side of a ski in a V-shape down the ski. Great for the whole length of the ski, or for the front of the ski when combined with linear. Christmas Trees are normally best on older, manmade, coarser snow.

Oblique

Oblique Cut rilling tools are normally used for fine, more mixed, or drier snow. Often mixed with linear structure on the tails as well. Oblique has the widest range of selection meaning you can find the perfect choice on race day! Coarse and Extra Coarse options can leave permanent imprints in bases, so use sparingly.

Alpine

All of the alpine specific are oblique cut rillers except for the new-in-2025 2mm Linear. The alpine structure tools have a open side to run the tool twice down the ski, once on each side. This design allows for any sized alpine ski, allowing the moisture to be pushed away from the edges on a very wide ski. The coarse and extra coarse options are very popular for late season skiing! They will leave permanent groves in your ski, so use sparingly!

Kits

If you have a trend of similar temperatures in the area that you ski, you may want to pick up a kit of 3 different rilling tools for that temperature. When the snow type/condition changes but the temperature stays similar, you may want to test a different structure.

Wax

Melt Wax

Over the last few seasons, the Red Creek waxes have exploded with popularity! The 2 major ones that we experimented with are the fluoro-free cold and fluoro-free warm (Silver). These 2 waxes often come up as the race wax of the day when melted on, though many people love to cold apply those waxes on! We will be able to see in the future how the rest of the melt wax line performs in Canadian snow. The Medium Base Prep wax is also very good! We use it when prepping brand new, or freshly ground race skis!

Liquids

Plenty of waxes to begin to test! We had never been able to get our hands on the Red Creek liquid waxes until now due to the very high cost shipping dangerous goods from rural Sweden. We now have enough interest in all the Red Creek waxes to warrant a large enough order to make the shipping worth it. They have been testing well on the European racing circuit and now they have come to Canada!

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Other Waxing Tools

A few other waxing tools for your kit! The Aluminum groove scraper will NEVER go bad! It doesn't get dull, it doesn't rust, it doesn't get gouged; never buy a plastic groove scraper again! The weight of this groove scraper allows clean grooves with just 1 pass! Keep that freshly scraped wax off your clothes with their lederhosen apron! Then when your skis are freshly race waxed, top them off with the SpeedPro Structure Tool. This tool uses the Finite system which has been well known as one of the best structure systems invented!