When skis were made of wood, the ski bases were naturally made
of wood as well. These days very few wooden skis are being made.
Virtually all new skis being made today are a combination of
modern materials. The ski base of a modern ski is made of most a
plastic material with some additives. Below we try and help
explain what the modern ski base is composed of and how it
interacts with ski wax. The advent of the modern ski base
started with non-wooden Alpine skis in the 1960's. By the 1970's
the weight of these non-wooden skis was reduced enough that
Nordic skis were viable. This new plastic base was (and still
is) mostly composed of a material known as polyethylene. In
skiing circles it is also commonly refered to as P-tex. All
snowboards use the modern ski base. Polyethylene, or P-tex for
short, is most of the material in a ski base. P-tex itself comes
in a variety of "sizes" that are used for different skis for
different reasons by ski manufacturers. Commonly there is
reference to "P-tex 2000" or "P-tex 300