How to wax skis at home, step by step

What waxing actually does

A ski base is porous plastic. Wax soaks into those pores and sits in the microscopic structure of the base, which does two things: it reduces friction against the snow, and it stops the base drying out. A base that has been run dry for a long time goes chalky and white at the edges, and that is real damage rather than a cosmetic change.

For a family skiing five days a year, speed is not the argument. Base preservation is. A ski waxed once at the start of the season and once at the end will outlive a ski that never gets waxed at all, and that is the honest reason to own the kit.

Do you need to do this yourself?

Not necessarily, and this page will say so before it sells you anything. A shop wax costs a fraction of a home kit, takes no evening, and is done properly. For a household that skis five days a year and owns one or two pairs of skis, several shop waxes are cheaper than the cheapest kit in this ledger.

Home waxing starts to make sense when there are four pairs of skis in the garage, or when the household skis often enough that a shop visit every few weeks is annoying, or when there is genuine pleasure in doing it. All three are legitimate. The tune kit roundup compares what each published kit contains and is honest about which household each suits.

What you need

The published kits differ mainly in the iron. The Demon Basic kit publishes a mini iron, which works and is slower. The Snow Ready kit publishes a full adjustable-temperature iron with a lifetime warranty, and the brush kit publishes three full-size brushes, horsehair, nylon and brass. If you are going to do this for more than one season, the iron is where the money should go.

The six steps

1. Clean and secure the ski. Wipe the base with a dry cloth to get grit off, and clamp or brace the ski base-up and level. Bindings should have their brakes retracted, usually with a rubber band over the arms, so they are out of the way.
2. Set the iron to the temperature printed on the wax. This is the number to follow: each wax publishes its own working range. An iron hot enough to make the wax smoke is too hot, and smoking wax means you are cooking the base.
3. Drip and spread. Hold the wax bar against the iron above the ski and let it drip in two lines down the length of the base. Then set the iron flat and move it steadily from tip to tail in one continuous motion, spreading the wax into an even film. Keep it moving. A stationary iron on a plastic base is how a base gets damaged.
4. Let it cool completely. Give it at least ten minutes and longer if the garage is warm. The wax has to solidify all the way through before it is scraped, and scraping warm wax pulls it back out of the pores.
5. Scrape with a sharp plastic scraper. Long strokes, tip to tail, holding the scraper at an angle and pushing. Sharpen the scraper edge on sandpaper if it has gone rounded, because a sharp scraper needs less force and a blunt one makes you press hard enough to damage the structure. Keep going until almost nothing comes off. It always looks like you have removed all the wax; you have not, because the wax that matters is in the base rather than on it.
6. Brush, then wipe. Brush tip to tail in firm passes to clear wax out of the fine structure in the base. Then wipe the dust off with a fiber cloth. This is the step that gets skipped and it is the one that makes the difference.

Why brushing matters more than the wax you chose

A ski base is not smooth. It carries a fine pattern of grooves, called the structure, that channels water out from under the ski. Wax fills those grooves and the brush is what reopens them. Skip it and the wax sits as a film on a flat surface, which is both slower and gone within a couple of runs.

This is why the kit that publishes three brushes is worth noting. A nylon brush is the one to use if you own only one; a horsehair or brass brush is used for different stages by people who do this properly. For a family, one nylon brush used conscientiously beats three brushes owned and unused.

How often

• Five days a year: once before the season and once before storing the skis in spring. The spring one matters more; a stored dry base oxidizes over the summer. The storage page covers the rest of the spring routine.
• Fifteen to twenty days a year: every four or five days on snow, or whenever the base looks dry and pale along the edges.
• After a spring day on wet dirty snow: always, because that snow strips wax quickly and often leaves grit behind.
• After a drive on salted roads with skis on the roof: rinse and dry first, then wax. Which is one of the arguments for putting bindings toward the rear.

Five mistakes worth avoiding

• A household clothes iron. Too hot, uncontrolled, and the steam holes leave uneven contact. This is the item worth buying purpose-made.
• Letting the iron sit still. Continuous motion tip to tail. A pause is a hot spot, and a hot spot delaminates a base.
• Scraping while warm. Ten minutes minimum. Impatience here undoes the whole job.
• A metal scraper on the base. Metal scrapers exist for removing wax from steel edges, not from the base.
• Waxing over a damaged base. A gouge deep enough to show white or black underneath needs repair first. The base repair page covers what can be fixed at home.

Snowboards are the same job

Everything above applies unchanged to a snowboard, with one practical difference: a board is wider, so the iron has to make more passes and the wax goes further per board than per ski. The published tune kits in this ledger are all sold for skis and snowboards together for exactly that reason.

If you are new to owning hardware at all, the storage page and the edge and base page are the other two thirds of keeping skis alive, and the kit roundup is where to start if you have decided to do it yourself.