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.

Article republished with permission by www.epicski.com.

Photo from original article