Waxing

Important safety note: Many of the things described below are dangerous. Waxing irons are hot and will burn you. Wax smoke is harmful to your health. Metal edges are extremely sharp throughout their preparation (far, far sharper than you realize) and it's easy to cut yourself, driving fine metal shavings deep into the wound, requiring proper cleaning and stitching by a qualified doctor, plus a Tetanus vaccination. You use the information contained here at your own risk. Happy Monkey Snowboards, Inc., cannot be held responsible if you injure yourself or damage your equipment by following these tips. Proceed at your own risk.

Keeping your base waxed is probably the best thing you can do to improve the performance of your snowboard. A good coat of wax also protects and extends the life of your base.

The point of waxing is not to put a lot of wax onto the base of your board, but to put the proper amount of wax into the base material. Modern ski and snowboard bases are made of UHMW polyethylene (commonly called PTEX), which is a naturally hydrophobic (water repellent) plastic. All base material, whether sintered or extruded, has microscopic pores that open up with heat and can absorb wax. Sintered bases have more pores and will absorb more wax. Wax makes the base even more hydrophobic, increasing glide. The trick is to get as much wax into the pores as possible, and to leave a very thin film of wax over the surface.

How often should you wax?

You really can't wax too much. We wax almost every day that we ride, and very rarely do we ride for more than two days without waxing. The more you wax, the more your base will absorb wax over time, improving glide. Also, when you wax the action of the scraper and various brushes over the base tends to remove any fine base hairs that may be present. These hairs (which are the result of base grinding, base repairs, poor base care, etc.) produce a lot of extra friction with the snow, slowing you down.

Wax selection

You'll notice that wax comes in temperature ranges. It's important to use a wax suited for the temperature range you expect. Use a warm wax for warmer temps, and a cool wax for cooler temps. Cooler waxes are harder, which means that you have to turn the temperature up on your iron to melt them, and you need to be careful when you wax so you don't overheat the base.

Most wax is hydrocarbon based, and is fine for most normal winter conditions. Some waxes contain fluorocarbon, which among other things is extremely hydrophobic. You can find low-fluoro and high-fluoro versions. The more fluorocarbon, the more water repellent the base will be. However, this stuff is usually pretty expensive, especially the high-fluoro kind. It's really only needed by people who are racing in very warm, wet conditions. There are also waxes with added graphite available. Graphite has some nice properties that tend to enhance heat dissipation and reduce static electricity, thus attracting less dirt and hopefully keeping the base cleaner, and therefore faster. Graphite wax is almost always used in warm, wet spring-like conditions.

We most often end up waxing with Swix CH8 hydocarbon wax, which has a temperature range of 25F to 34F (-4C to 1C), and works well for a typical day here in the Pacific Northwest. On a colder day, we'll use CH7 (18F to 28F). When we travel, we try to find the average temperature for the area we're headed to and use the appropriate wax. You can buy wax in really big, economical  blocks from Tognar.

Waxing tools

These are the tools you may need (some are optional) to wax your board. The use of each one will be explained in the various steps below.

Applying wax

Place your board securely on your snowboard vise, the base clean and prepared, and the edges tuned and ready to go. Make sure to brush away any left over metal filings. You don't want to wax where it's cold, and you don't want to wax a cold board. Room temperature is best. Also, remove the bindings: they act like big heat-sinks and they'll make it hard for you to heat the base evenly under them.

Note: you should always wax in a well ventilated area. Always follow the wax manufacture's safety recommendations. They know best, and they want you to live a long time so you'll buy more of their wax.

It's time to apply the wax. You need to heat up your iron to the proper temperature to melt the wax you've chosen. If you have a nice waxing iron like the Swix standard wax iron shown below, then you can plug it in and turn the dial to the proper number and wait. If you've got your mom's old iron, complete with holes (which is fine, just don't put any water in it!) then you need to experiment a bit. Turn the iron onto a low setting and wait for it to heat up. Then, see if your wax will melt on the iron. If it doesn't, turn the heat up a bit more and try again. If the wax does melt, make sure it isn't smoking. If the wax smokes, turn the iron down and try again.

Extremely important safety note: fluorocarbon is toxic when burned. Follow the manufacture's instructions carefully. Don't breathe in the smoke if you accidentally make it smoke. Use it and all wax in a well ventilated area. If you are a smoker then you shouldn't really do any thing with fluorinated waxes, since transfer of the wax to your cigarettes is likely, and burning and inhaling the wax is a recipe for disaster. Finally, hot wax will burn your skin. Don't drip it on yourself, and don't touch the base of the iron.

Hold the iron at a slight angle, and hold your stick of wax against the base of the iron as shown below. The wax will melt and drip off the iron. Drip wax evenly along the base. For an average snowboard, 4 drip lines is usually enough: 1 along each edge, and two evenly down either side of the center of the board. Don't add too much... you'll just have to scrape it off later, and it's a waste. Add too little if you're not sure, since you can always add more later, and it will be obvious if you need more.

After dripping the wax on, you want to spread the wax around and get even coverage over the entire base. If you need a little more wax in one place or another, then add a few more drops.

Always keep the iron moving. Never leave it sitting in one place. Also, don't concentrate on one place for too long. If the wax remains molten for more than 10 seconds or so, then you're overheating the base. This is very easy to do near the tip and tail, so be careful. If you overheat the base, there is a risk of 1) ruining the base material there, and 2) breaking down the epoxy that holds the board together, causing it to delaminate. (And no, the manufacturer isn't going to cover that!)

Once the wax is evenly spread out, you want to make sure you heat the base thoroughly and evenly so the wax absorbs well. Make long, slow, non-overlapping passes the width of the iron along the length of the board. Move slowly enough so that you leave a trail of molten wax 5"-6" long behind the iron as you go. Again, don't go too slow, but do go a little slower on this step so that the base has a chance to absorb the wax.

Now, let the board cool at room temperature for at least 30 min. Don't put it someplace cold to cool... you want the wax to cool slowly as it continues to penetrate the base.

Scraping

After the wax has dried slowly for at least a half hour, you can scrape the wax off. That's right, you want to scrape as much of it off as you can. Using a sharp scraper makes this very easy. A scraper is essentially a big piece of plastic with square, sharp edges. A brand-new scraper is great, and removes the wax effortlessly. One that's been used for a while is much less efficient, but it's easy to renew the edge of the scraper using a pansar file. Simply lay the file on a flat surface, and run the edge of the scraper over the file lightly as shown below. Make sure to hold the scraper at a 90° angle to the file, and make light passes until the edge of the scraper is sharp again. Tognar sells a really great tool that will hold the file for you, making this much, much easier, but you can do it by hand if you're careful. The tool also has slots with a sharp metal edge that you can run the scraper quickly over (bottom left picture below.)

Assuming the scraper is sharp, start scraping wax off the board. Work in long, light strokes, leaning the scraper away from your body and pushing the scraper away from you as shown below. Don't press too hard if you're new to this: you don't want to dig the scraper into the base (but really, that's only a concern if you have a super sharp scraper.)

Scraping the tip and tail can be a little challenging. It's easiest to pull the scraper towards you in short, controlled strokes on the tip and tail to remove the wax there. Pick one side of the scraper to dedicate to the flat part of the base, and the other side for the tip and tail. That's because you'll have a tendency to run the scraper over the edge, possibly denting the scraper. It's nice to keep one edge in really good shape for the bulk of the board.

Brushing

Just as you want to scrape as much wax as possible off the surface of your board, you also want to get as much wax out of your base structure as possible.

There are two ways to brush the wax out of your base structure: by hand, or with a rotobrush.

• By hand: using a nylon brush, like #2 or #6 in the picture of tools towards the top of the page, work in firm, overlapping strokes along the base of the board from tip to tail. As you brush, you'll see very small pellets of wax come up. Brush until that stops happening. (Note: this can take quite some time. Really, only insane people actually brush that long by hand.)
• With a rotobrush: a rotobrush is a brush in the shape of a cylinder that you attach to a drill. This is significantly faster than brushing by hand. The key is to not spin the rotobrush too fast... you don't want to build up heat and melt the wax again! Use moderate pressure and keep the brush moving. You can buy a rotobrush from Tognar, of course.

Warning: a rotobrush will kick wax dust up into your face. Wear protective goggles and a dust mask (#4 in the picture of tools above.)

Cleanup

Finally, when you're all done scraping and brushing, you want to remove any drips of wax from the edge of the board, and any wax that has gotten on the top of the board. This step isn't super necessary, but it's nice to cleanup after yourself. (Your mother probably tried to teach you this. Were you listening?)

You can use the end of our scraper to scrape wax off the edges of your board. Use the end, not the surface that you scrape with. The edge will dig into the scraper a bit, and you don't want to mess up the nice edge that you scrape the base with. Also, be careful not to gouge the sidewall or top sheet with the scraper as you remove wax drippings.

If the wax drippings end up past the edge onto your top sheet, then just use your finger nail to remove the wax. You won't damage your top sheet with your finger nail, but you will with the scraper.

Finally, wipe the top sheet down with an old rag to remove the rest of the wax. Put the bindings back on, and enjoy your smooth new ride.