Step 1 : Measure out the length of your skin. If you have an adjustable tail system, place the tail clip in the third or fourth notch and lay the skin flat over the bottom of your ski. With a fixed tail system, make sure that the skin will be taut when measuring the length and where your tip loop goes.

Step 2: Place your tip loop over the tip of ski and mark where your tip loop will go. Make sure you have the correct size tip loop. You don't want the loop to be so big that it hits the middle of the shovel, or too short that you could kick off the tips. You can sometimes reverse your tip loops to fit better.

Step 3:Use the template (included with your skins) to cut the top of your skin where the tip loop will go. Use the mark you just made (above) to align with the 'fold line' on the template. Cut according to the size of your tip loop and the width of your ski.

The top of your skin should look something like this. You want enough material so that the tip loop is secure, but not too much so that it's too far down the base of your skin.

Step 4: Put the skin, centered, on your ski with the tip loop in place and the tail clip taut. Using the edge as a guide, work from tip to tail trimming the skin along the wall of your ski.
Tip: Sometimes the excess trimmings make great skinny skins or kicker skins!

Step 5: Move the skin over so that it's 2x the width of the edge. This is going to make the skin wide enough to get full base coverage, but leave your edges exposed so you can get bite when in tricky terrain or side hills. Trim the other side of the skin.

To store your skins, cut the cheat sheet in half and fold one of your skins on either side of it. When you're using your skins a lot, you can fold them into each other, but for long term storage, use your cheat sheets--your glue will last longer.