How To Wax A Snowboard At Home Today we are presenting you a super quick and easy guide on how to wax your snowboard at home as a part of our tech tip series. Waxing your snowboard is essential when it comes to taking care of your gear and regularly doing so will lengthen its lifespan. Also, waxing your own board will make you as fast as lightning, beating your friends at head-to-head races on the slopes or clearing kicker tables with ease. Everyone will be jealous of your newly acquired DIY skill! Of course, you always have the option to bring your snowboard to a shop to get it professionally serviced. We do believe though, that with a bit of help from our side, you can do it all by yourself. And that means that you will have a snowboard that is perfectly in shape whenever you need it and even better – you can save quite some money once you’re set up.
Step by Step Guide
But today is not the day for a long intro. Let’s dive straight into our super easy step by step guide on how to wax your snowboard at home. We will supply you with a list of all the things you need to buy beforehand and guide you through the waxing process step by step! Success rates are very high!
Step 1 - Get Your Tools Iron
A lot of people ask the question if they need to buy a special iron for ironing a snowboard at home. The answer is pretty simple: No! Your grandma's old iron will also do the job! You shouldn't use the same iron for your clothes and your snowboard though as wax rests could stick to your clothes. Of course you can also buy an iron that is specially made for waxing a snowboard. But if you have an old one at home, there is no need for buying a new one!
Work trestles (optional) If you have a pair of work trestles in your garage you will be smiling. Waxing your snowboard is a lot easier when you have those at hand. If not, there are a million ways around it. Two chairs, a pair of boxes or simply outside on the floor.
Scraper
The scraper is an important tool when it comes to waxing your own board. The scraper is a little plastic disk with a sharp edge that will help you with scraping off the wax layer, that won’t stay on your board. Too much wax will slow you down, that is why you want to scrape off as much as possible until there is only a really thin wax layer of wax left on the board that fills out the little cuts and scratches in your base.
A block of wax When ironing the base of your snowboard, you always need to buy hot wax. Hot wax is available in big blocks, that will last for a really long time. Most hot wax types work universal for skis, snowboards and all kinds of temperatures. On the package the ironing temperature should be mentioned so you can be sure that this wax is suitable for hot waxing your snowboard.
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Step 2 - Clean The Surface The second step is pretty straight forward. Clean the base of your snowboard. It might happen that you have dirt on the base of your board from your last holiday. To make sure that the surface you are working with is clean and fresh, just take a cloth with warm water and give the base of your snowboard a good old wipe. If it is really dirty or you didn’t clean the base of your snowboard in a while, you might want to try soaking the cloth in alcohol to make sure that not only the superficial, but also the persistent dirt is being removed. Allow to dry for about 30 minutes to make sure the new wax can connect properly to your old wax layer!
Step 3 - Apply Wax Now we come to the hardest part. Applying the wax. There are probably a million guidelines on how to do this but in the end of the day there are only a few rules that you should follow. Before applying the wax make sure that you change into an old sweater and an old pair of pants. You should also cover the floor where you plan to work with newspaper, so the wax doesn’t drip all over it. Now it is time to set up your workstation. Grab your trestles (or two chairs) and place your snowboard on top of them with the bindings facing down. It is time to plug in the iron. Check the packaging of our wax to see what temperature should be used for your type of wax.
Usually it the temperature should range between 110 – 120°C. Wait for 5 to 10 minutes until the iron is hot. Now, that everything is set up, you can start applying wax to the base of your board. Start off by holding the wax block onto your hot iron in a distance of around 5 – 10 cm above your board. Melt the wax until the first wax drops hit your board. Now you can start spreading the hot wax over the base of your board.
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IMPORTANT: Always wax from the nose to the tail of your board. This is the direction in which you will be riding downhill, so you want the wax to be applied in the direction of your movement. Continue doing so, until the base of your board is covered by a thin layer of wax. To make sure that you covered the whole surface of your board, add one line of wax drops close to both of your edges and iron them in the direction of the tail of your snowboard. This will determine how much speed you are going to get out of your new wax job.
Step 4 - Cool Down It is time to let the wax cool down and sink into the base of your snowboard. Don’t scrape off the hot wax right after you applied it. The wax needs to harden a little bit and connect with the old layer. We suggest you to let the wax sink in for about 30 min up to 1 hour. Also at this stage: Don’t forget to unplug the iron and let it cool down before you put it away!
Step 5 - Scrape Off
Last but not least: Scrape the remaining wax of your board. For that you will need a little plastic scraper so that you can apply pressure on your snowboard and remove the wax that you don’t need. You only want to keep the wax that connected with the old base layer so you can get rid of the rest. It will only slow you down – so don’t be shy! Take the scraper and place it at the nose of your snowboard. Now apply pressure and scrape off the wax from the nose to the tail of your board until you removed all the superficial wax. To finish your wax job, take a dry cloth and wipe away the wax rests to free the base of your board from anything, that could affect your end result and therefore how fast you will be on the slopes or when hitting the big jumps. Below the full article available from Ridestore Magazine https://www.ridestore.com/mag/how-to-wax-a-snowboard /