How to Wax The Right Way
This is the EASIEST wax breakdown for beginners to learn! There are also some pro tips popped in so keep an eye out for those. Check out our other upcoming article about choosing the right kind of wax. For the sake of this tutorial, we're just talking about the actual waxing process:
4 Easy Steps To Wax Your Gear The Right Way
Step 1: Apply Your Wax - The Drip Technique
First, plug in your wax iron and give it at least 3-4 minutes to let it come up to temperature. Place your ski or board on a ski vise, if needed, with a snowboard vise attachment (or a secure surface if you don't have one) so that your ski/board doesn't move or wobble.
PRO TIP: If you have a base cleaner or conditioner, this is a great time to clean the dirt or old wax out of your base before you apply a fresh coat of wax!
How to choose your wax iron temperature:
For most waxes, 125°C/257°F is a good temperature to start -- if the wax isn't melting well, try turning it up by 5-10 degrees. If the wax smokes and bubbles when it touches the iron, turn it down by 5-10 degrees.
For the drip technique, once your iron is hot, hold it about 5-10 inches over your base and hold your bar of wax so that it begins to melt and drip onto the base. You may have to move quickly to avoid a large puddle of wax falling onto your base, as the wax begins to melt and drip very fast.
A good note to remember is that with wax, LESS IS MORE! A little wax will spread over a big area! A consistent, wavy line of dripped wax along the length of your skis, or two lines down the length of your snowboard is more than enough to cover the entire base in step 2.
*You will learn with time how much wax is too much, and how much is the right amount. Most times beginners will use up to 15x the amount of wax they need to coat their base(s), all just to scrape it all off at the end!
Step 2: Spread Out The Wax - Letting the Base Absorb the Wax
The first part of step two is to use the heat of your iron to spread the drips of wax into a thin layer over the entire surface of the base. Moving quickly, you can start with small circular movements, with the goal of getting ever inch of the base covered with wax, - all the way to the edges.
CAUTION: Rule #1 is to always keep your iron moving! Never leave your hot iron on one area of your base for too long, as it may damage the base and core structure of your ski/board.
Once you can see that the wax is pretty well distributed across the base with a few small gaps in-between, we begin the very important second part of step 2: Heating the base so it absorbs the wax.
Now, much more slowly, push your iron across the base in a straight line from tip to tail. You are looking for a 'snail trail' behind the iron as you push it - a strip about 3-4 inches-long of shiny, hot wax on the surface of the base, which you can see cool and lose its shininess after the iron hasn't been on it for a few seconds.
You need to complete this process over the entire base, and repeat it three times:
On skis: The iron is wide enough to reach edge-to-edge in one pass. Simply repeat the 'snail trail' step 3 times by running the iron down the base from tip-to-tail.
On a snowboard: Do this with the same 'snail trail' method as on skis, BUT the base of a snowboard is much wider than the iron so you will have to do this in 2-3 parallel lanes (think lanes on a highway that the iron has to travel down) to cover the entire width from edge-to-edge of the snowboard base. Repeat this 3 times also.
PRO TIP: If this snail trail is shorter than 3 inches, you're probably moving the iron too slow - which could risk damaging your base. If the snail trail is longer than 5 inches, you're likely moving too quickly and the pores in your base aren't getting enough heat to soak up the wax before it cools down to much again.
Step 3: Wait For The Base To Cool
Step 3 is the easiest step: wait 20 minutes for the wax to cool COMPLETELY. Even if the surface of the base feels cool, the core may still be warm so be sure to give it a whole 20 minutes before proceeding!
Step 4: Scrape & Brush
Once your wax is completely cooled, it's time to scrape! Use a plastic scraper and with firm, even pressure run it from tip to tail across the surface of the base. Repeat this until strips of wax no longer come up off of the base on each pass.
Now it's time to pull out your brushes! Roto brushes - the easiest and fastest method of brushing/polishing. Hand brushes work wonders as well with a little bit of elbow-grease!
Always brush from tip-to-tail of the ski/board & always start with your coarsest brush and end with the finest: [Brass > Horsehair > Nylon]. If you just have 1 kind of brush that's perfect, just use that one only! Use a firm amount of pressure brush evenly until you are pulling up small crumbs of wax in the brush anymore.
[This may take from 5-10 passes with each hand brush - or just 2-3 if using a roto brush.]
After brushing, use a scrub pad and a damp cloth to clean up the rest of the wax residue from your bases. And then that's it! You're ready to ride on the fastest base(s) you've ever felt, tuned to perfection by you!
Looking for tools? We have every item you need from this tutorial in our online shop, shipped within 1 business day, with free shipping over $100 in the USA!
Wanna keep tuning like a pro? Keep checking back for more posts! We've got the best tuning tips and tutorials rolling out all winter long!
All these tools in this tutorial are included in our best selling pre-packed Tuning Kits! If you're looking for the tools to get started, they are by far the best and cheapest way to get all the basics and start waxing your gear right away!