Why clean your base?
Cleaning your Ski and Snowboard base –also called belay– is an often overlooked part of waxing. Simply applying new wax is not enough to regain smooth gliding.
Just like with your car - where you not only have to top up the oil, but also regularly change the filters and oil itself - you need to pay extra attention to this special base material every five to seven periodic wax sessions when waxing your snowboard or skis.
Both a Sintered and an Extruded base consist of an enormous mass of small pores that become clogged by wax but also with small particles of dirt such as soil, soot, stone chips, etc. With standard maintenance you cover this dirt with a layer of wax, which leaves less room for the wax itself, the result: the performance of your Ski or Snowboard deteriorates!
Fortunately, there are several methods to polish your base after which you can apply clean wax to the deepest of the pores. We will briefly explain them.
TIP! Do you often go indoor skiing or snowboarding? Then we advise you to clean your base more frequently, because manual snow is not only hard and dry but also seriously polluted by, among other things, soot particles from the "Pistebully", rubber from the "Magic Carpet", etc.
Manual or manual cleaning
Hot Wax
During a Hot Wax maintenance service Wax & Board we clean your base by hand as standard. That is to say; depending on the degree of contamination we select the right hardness of our hand brush as well as its metal structure. There are 3 types of brushes that we use; Steel, Copper or Bronze. These come in a soft and harder version. We use these brushes exclusive to clean your base so that no dirt gets back into the base material.
We do the manual cleaning several times from “tip to tail” so that we open the pores in the right sliding direction. Ready to absorb new wax.
Belt Wax
Wait a minute! What about that cheap “Belt Wax” what you get in every other maintenance shop? A Belt Wax machine shortens the maintenance from a little over an hour to about 3 to 5 minutes. That makes them popular because you can handle a larger volume, which of course reduces the maintenance price enormously.
However, you do lose quality; these machines usually consist of 2 fixed Nylon brushes that only spread wax and then polish. If you are lucky, the shop will first do a manual cleaning, but this is an exception. If you are unlucky, the previous board was so dirty that it is still in the brushes and therefore also transfers to your board.
Please note that base cleaning is only the very first step in waxing and grinding. Wax & BoardWe wax and polish your skis in several phases instead of all at once during maintenance by a Belt Wax!
Chemical cleaning
Chemical cleaning is a less popular solution to clean pores of dirt. Years ago this was quite aggressive stuff that literally bit the structure of the ski surface. This chemical stuff has been further developed over the years and is now able to dissolve only wax -and enclosed dirt- from solid to liquid substance. This chemical cleaning can be applied to the snowboard in aerosol or liquid product, after which you can remove that old dirty wax with a special cloth a few minutes later.
During a chemical cleaning by Wax & Board we have a choice of 2 different cleaners for both your Skis and Snowboard. We have special cleaning fluid for Fluor Wax as well as for the more modern Fluor free (organic) wax.
Tip! Because a chemical cleaning all removes wax from pores Wax & Board with this maintenance type then first apply a Base Wax, which improves the absorption of wax, and finally apply the maintenance wax of your choice. This way you are sure that the wax will last longer than 1 day on holiday!
Hot Scrape
Finally, there is the famous, most popular, “Hot Scrape” cleaning. With this maintenance we apply a soft and specially designed paraffin over the entire surface of your Snowboard or Skilat. As soon as this has the right degree of solidification, we remove this still warm cleaning wax from your base. During this process we literally pull the dirt out of the base. The bright white paraffin goes on the board and comes off gray to black. We must note here that this is a special technique because you can also easily scrape the base of your board which gives the same color effect, but something that is of course not the intention!!
We repeat this Hot Scrape procedure at Wax & Board as often as necessary, i.e. until the base of your skis or snowboard is clean.
The big advantage of this cleaning method is that there is always wax, or paraffin, present in the pores which is less harmful to the material. Of course, after this cleaning we always apply a so-called "Base Wax" before we wax with the wax of your choice.
Finally
If you have your equipment maintained as a slalom skier, you know that mixing ski wax is something unavoidable in the standard workshop. A serious consequence can be that you have so much fluorine on your surface that you ski slower.
As a Freestyle Skier or Snowboarder you will also sometimes Dry Slope piste. This piste requires specific “Dry Wax” which cannot be used in normal skiing conditions.
In such extreme cases we can Wax & Board, upon request, perform a combination of specific cleanings so that you can start again without problems.
If you want a rock-solid maintenance service for your ski or snowboard, then you should of course choose waxing and grinding at Wax & Board!
