HOW TO PUT ON A TAILPAD WITH WADE CARMICHAEL

Welcome to ‘How To’, a walk through tutorial series highlighting the best (and occasionally quirky) steps to efficiently tackle whatever challenge is presented to you!

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.

In this episode, new-to-the-world-tour compadre Wade Carmichael runs us through his tips for applying a tailpad successfully. Tune in now!

What you will need: a surfboard and a tailpad.

1. Make sure your board is nice and clean.

2. Find your placement. I usually just kind of put the whole pad on there first and see where I want it. I get it right back to the leggy string and right over the back fin. I usually just line up the middle bit of the grip with the stringer, and just leave it there.

3. Middle piece first. Peel back the paper so the glue and sticky side is exposed ready to put on. You don’t want to be getting your fingers all over the glue, because you want it to be stuck on there for life!

4. Then line it up, place it softly on the board and get all the glue on there! You only really need to give it one bit of a push, then it’s stuck on pretty well.

5. Now that the middle piece is on, I usually spread the pieces of the tail pad a little bit to cover the whole area of the tail of the board, rather than have it all together. Get it in the middle of the stringer again just so it’s all nice and even. Then just apply the same principal.

6. Again, make sure you give all the edges a bit of a push because they’re the first thing that would come up. I just try to get them down then it’s good to go!

7. Let the glue set for a while, then you’re ready to surf!