XFM - extreme sports for men, by men

Once the base has been covered completely in a thin layer of wax, allow it to cool for at least thirty minutes. After the wax has cooled, hold a plastic scraper at a 45-degree angle to take long, even strokes down the board and toward your body. Again, do this in an up-and-down pattern. You will notice extra wax accumulating on the scraper blade. Keep scraping until this wax residue is almost gone. Usually, scraping two to three times should do the trick. Take extra care on the turned-up nose and tail of the snowboard. Many people make the mistake of leaving clumps of wax in these areas because they are a little more difficult to scrape due to their shapes. Even though this leftover wax isn’t on the very bottom of the board, it still causes problems with decreased performance, such as slowing and sticking.

Finish the base by rubbing it with a buffing pad. Ultimately, you want the base to be free of any wax clumps and have just a little bit of shine. Wax on a snowboard actually helps melt the snow beneath it, so that you are actually riding on a thin layer of water. This can create speed-killing suction, but proper buffing should help eliminate this by getting that stubborn wax out of the many grooves manufactured into your board’s base (put there to help channel the water away from the base, like the way tire treads channel rainwater away from the tire). Base structure can also be “built” back in by pushing a stiff wire brush in a cross-hatch pattern across the base before you wax it. (You can also ask your local wax shop for a stone grind to add texture to your snowboard’s base.) If you’ve done the job correctly, you’ll be rewarded with a great ride.