Quick Tips

(FAQ)

Cleaning and regularly waxing your bases is the most common and easiest ski and snowboard maintenance task. It will protect your boards and optimize the glide and turns.

Basic Hot Waxing Steps:
1) Bring the skis or snowboard to room temperature if possible.
2) Place the board(s) on a good work surface that can secure them for scraping.
3) Clean the bases with base cleaner or hot scraping.
4) Drip, crayon, hot touch & crayon or hot touch iron smear solid wax onto clean and dry base. Less wax requires less scraping, brushing & mess to clean up.
5) While keeping the iron moving, spread and melt the wax evenly over the entire base. A trail of liquid wax should just follow the iron.
6) Work the wax in again to assure coverage
7) Let the wax cool and harden for a minimum of 30 minutes.
Scrape wax down to base with a sharp plexi scraper to an even, thin film.
9) Free the base structure by brushing out the micro-grooves/structure of the bases and polish to a nice sheen with manual or roto brushes (or both).
10) Clean up the mess and then go glide fast and make smoother turns!

However you wax your boards, be sure to clean the bases very well and pay attention to structuring to reduce suction for better slide, especially in wetter conditions. The Maplus liquids and sprays will achieve a higher level of saturation and durability than hot waxing with solid waxes by simply applying and rubbing in with cork or felt. Saving lots of time and effort, they are easier to apply and control amounts, less or no scraping or brushing is necessary for high performance. For optimal performance, add heat by moving a iron down the ski or snowboard, over a saturation. After at least 10 minutes and the wax has hardened, polish the excess wax with horsehair or nylon brush to expose the structure. When waxing, realize that you are trying to get the wax into the base, not on the base. Scraping and brush polishing removes the excess and exposes the base structure.

HELPFUL TIPS:
-We recommend cleaning the ski or snowboard bases with Maplus detergents and then applying a hot Maplus Racing Base after each race or after preparing the ski or snowboard bases and edges.
-All traces of basic wax must be thoroughly removed before applying racing wax: scrape off the wax and then brush and polish thoroughly.
-If you clean the ski or snowboard bases with a detergent immediately before applying racing wax, we recommend heating the wax so the detergent can evaporate completely.

-We recommend the following iron temperatures to melt Maplus ski or snowboard waxes:

-120°C (248°F): Universal;
-130°C (266°F): (Soft – Soft Graphite)Racing Base, (P1-P2-P3) Hot;
-140°C (284°F): (P1-P2-P3) Med; Race Base Medium
-150°C (302°F): (P1-P2-P3) Cold;
-160°C (320°F): (Hard – Hard Graphite)Racing Base, P4.

If used improperly, the waxing iron can damage the ski or snowboard construction.

To save time, wax and mess while hot waxing solids, Hot Touching is better than dripping and then ironing, especially with harder, cold waxes.

Hot Touching & Crayoning uses the least amount of solid wax, total effort, time and is the least messy. By briefly touching a bar of wax against the base of a hot waxing iron, the wax softens and is easier to apply to the base by crayoning a section of a ski or board at a time. When the crayoning becomes less effective, repeat the hot touch and crayoning until the base has a reasonably even and thin coat of wax. Then make several passes with the iron to liquify and evenly spread the wax over and into the base.

(If you are concerned with a hot iron and a very thin layer of wax on your base, using a sheet of teflon between will protect the base and make for smoother ironing.) Let cool & harden, scrape and brush. The scrapings will be minimal compared to drip/hot waxing and scraping.

Hot Touching and Smearing is similar to Crayoning. The difference is after touching the wax bar to the base, you smear the wax onto the base with the iron. This can be somewhere in between the dripand crayoning methods in both technique and amount of wax applied.

Following hot touching and smearing with a light hot scrape or fiberlene between base and iron can be comparable to crayoning requiring minimal scraping and brushing.

A ‘cheat’ to include in your bag of tricks if you are in a hurry, got over zealous dripping wax while hot waxing or simply wish to reduce time, effort and mess while scraping after the wax cools and hardens, etc, is Light Hot Scraping.

After the wax cools for a minute or two, take a sharp plexi-scraper, held with even, light to moderate pressure at a 60° (+/-) angle towards you and pull down the full length of your ski or snowboard.

This should leave a relatively even, thin and smooth coat of wax.

You may also notice that the resultant semi-warm and moist scraping contains dirt, old wax or other deleterious materials, depending on prior steps.

Follow the scraping with a pass or two with your iron to re-liquify the wax and to assure that the scraping didn’t pull out the wax from the base. Let cool and harden, then scrape normally to remove the remainder and brush to free the structure. The scraping time and mess should be substantially reduced.

This is contrary to conventional wisdom and practices where hot scraping is typically a separate step with a soft wax than the application of the wax of the day. Basically, Light Hot Scraping combines the two techniques into one. It also can be additionally helpful when applying hard, cold temperature waxes, where the scraping and brushing requires much more time and effort.

Since the objective of hot waxing is to deliver wax into the base and NOT onto the base, it’s hard to imagine that this procedure would reduce the durability or performance of a given wax versus conventional practices, but it may take some experimenting to see if there is a noticeable difference or downsides, relative to ones personal goals or needs.