HOW TO WAX A SURFBOARD WITH WADE CARMICHAEL

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How do you put grip on a skate deck? How do you put in and remove fins on a surfboard? What’s the best way to style your Chuck Taylor’s? All this and more now answered for you, through the eyes of those most involved in each individual industry.

Tune in below as Wade Carmichael walks us through one of surfing’s most important etiquette’s, waxing a board. Everyone’s got their own technique, and Wade certainly has his own.

What you’ll need: A surfboard and some wax.

1. Make sure you buy the right wax for your water temperature. I’m using warm water wax right now; it’s the harder stuff. You can get tropical which is super hard, but soft is usually a bit more grippy. It depends if you’re in heaps hot water you might want to just use hard stuff. In the cold stuff when you’re in booties and gloves you want to use really soft, grippy stuff because you don’t want to be falling off then, it’s too cold!
2. Find somewhere out of the sun to make sure the wax doesn’t melt.
3. Don’t push too hard. You just want it to be a nice, light layer and the wax usually does all the work for you. Use a light touch as you just kind of move the wax around the deck of the board.
4. Use different angles and also try use the corners of the block because you can get a better layer of wax when you do it that way.
5. Just use short little movements. You’ll start seeing wax bumps.
6. Once you get that base layer on, you just gently go over the top of it, and the wax just starts beading up and starts getting nice and grippy and starts looking good.
7. Boom, we’re not slipping off that bad boy. Mmm grippy. Grip it and rip it!