(disclaimer - I accept no responsibility for the advice given in this HowTo or the damage you do to your board because of it; although frankly there's not much you can do accept file your edges clean off, and if you do that well you're off to the shop for another board!)
To start you'll need a nice work area and a couple of cold beers. You'll need something to rest the board on and to hold it in place while you work. It's a good idea to do this in a basement or garage, somewhere you can easily sweep up the mess you're about to make.
As for tools, you'll need an iron your girlfriend doesn't want to use anymore (snigger), a plastic scraper, some wax - as it's spring, we're using a mix of warm (yellow) and winter (blue) wax. You'll also need a good edging tool.
First, we'll take care of our edges. We want to do this first so that any metal scrapings we make will be cleaned away before we start applying the wax. Start by securing your deck side on so you can take a look at those edges. Check the sharpness by gently scratching the tops of your fingernails over them - your pedicurist will
have a fit about this.
For edging we'll be using a special edging tool. This is a directional file which you draw from tip to tail. There's an arrow on it to help you out. You can also set to a number of edge angles - usually 88 or 90 degrees. It doesn't sound a lot but I've been told it does to racers. If you're hitting rails then you don't want any edges, so you can blunt them down. If you're just a regular runner like me, then you want a nice sharp edge. You'll see you want this edge from tip to tail all down the side cut. The nose and tail edges can be rounded out, so you can take the file and blunt out those edges. This will be good for when you're buttering tail spins. Radical!
Start at the nose cut - where the rounding starts into the side cut. Draw the file in a firm, single stroke from tip to tail. You probably wont make a whole run if you've been in the trees and your edges have been chipped to hell, but keep going. Each run should get easier. Once you've finished, do the nail check again and repeat on the other side.
Wax on. Wax off.
The base of your deck is a membrane which is made up of the weave of layers and layers of material. What you want to do is melt wax into this membrane and then remove the excess.
Start by laying the deck down flat. You've probably still got your bindings on, so you'll need some blocks tip and tail big enough for this. We've wrapped ours in rubber too, to help protect the funky design on your deck.
Since it's spring, we're using a combination of spring time (yellow) and winter wax (blue). Mixing waxes like this help out in those slushy end of season runs in mild weather. For the main bulk of winter though, you'll just need to apply your winter wax. Because of the higher melting point, you don't need much of the spring wax.
Taking your warm iron, touch the wax to the iron plate until it starts to drizzle. Create runs up and down the board from the center outwards. Make sure you don't burn the wax - you'll see a bit of smoke, but if you see too much smoke and discoloration your iron is too high.
You shouldn't waste the wax - just a few drizzles should do. Next you take you iron and apply it to your deck. You want to move quickly, but smoothly to apply the wax into the membrane of your deck. The idea is to get the wax inside the tiny holes in your base. It's a good idea to move from nose to tail in slow tracks. Ensure you get that wax out to the edges.
Once you've covered the deck, and left it to cool down for around 20 minutes, you're ready to strip that wax off.
Securing your board at this point is necessary as you're about to apply a fair amount of force to it. We're using special grippy rests for this.
Taking your scraper, work down from nose to tail in long, sweeping runs. You will probably hit snags in the wax. Just move back up the deck and try again. Keep working until you've got that wax off. Take special care at over the binding plates. The bindings will draw the deck upwards ever so slightly thus your flat edge scraper will just miss this area. Bend the scraper are you scrape to take care of these areas.
You're finished. Finally wipe down your deck and check out your handy work. Nice job, eh! Now you're ready for a new day of shelping the narr and hocking your meat! Don't forget to sweep up all that shredded wax!
