Am i supposed to have excess wax on my snowboard after i waxed it?
Am i supposed to have excess wax on my snowboard after i waxed it?
Tags: after, excess, Snowboard, supposed, waxed
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on Saturday, January 21st, 2012 at 9:07 pm and is filed under snowboard wax.
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No – there should be no excess wax. How much diligence you put into this depends on the type of performance you want.
The special plastic surface of the underneath of a snowboard or ski actually absorbs the wax. I am assuming that you are doing a hot wax. After you have melted the wax onto the board you should scrape it clean of any excess using a plastic scraper. You should then use a brush (usually 2 brushes, a brass one followed by a nylon one) to clean out the structure (very small ridges that help the underside not stick to the snow) on the surface. By the end of this process there should be no wax visible visible. If you are more recreational and applying a paste you can polish it rather than scrape.
If you looked at the surface with a low power microscope you would see flecks of wax in very small pores in the base.
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As a response to the 2nd answerer. I assumed the original question was about the process to tune a board and whether the wax is left on or should be removed.. ie. is scraping required at all. So the intent of my answer was to say that scraping the excess off is a good idea. I agree that it is not worth spending excess time on this for a recreational boarder/skier, or even a entry level racer. And certainly I would not worry about getting 100% of the wax off.
In terms of brushing… the brass/bronze brush is used to expose the structure (the small lines that run along the surface)… and the nylon one to clean off any small particles of wax. At least that is the case on skis. I understand that some use a horse hair brush to ‘polish’ the surface.. personally I dont have one.
However – I admit I don’t board so it may be different for boarders.
Overall its a pretty quick process. I just touched up the edges and waxed 4 pairs of skis (2 race pairs) in just over 90 minutes and in doing so avoided spending $30 a pair.
PS: you should really let the wax cool for a while so it gets absorbed, before any scraping.
I answered this question above already… but the skier who replied here is WRONG. Unless you are racing, and tenths of a second makes a difference, you wont feel ANY difference if you dont get 100% of the wax off…. Just make sure you scrape it from tip to tail so you create micro-channels in the board in the right direction. if you get 80-90% of the wax removed then that is good enough. Using 10 kinds of brushes after scraping is a waste of time, unless you are a ski racer competing for Gold this winter in Vancouver.
*You will notice the skier even linked some references from ski racing websites…. GREAT, people who are so bored with their sport they spend half the day scraping their skis for a 2 minute race. Unless you are competing just scrape it and ride… sometimes on really icy days I dont even scrape my board at all!! I let the icy snow scrape it all off, and the difference is barely noticeable.