Waxing and Sharpening

I never wax my edges 🤪

Sorry I couldn’t resist.

I wax when the board starts looking dry. How often that is depends on the snow quality, much of what I ride is super aggressive man made snow and that can wear through the wax in less than a day. On better snow the wax lasts much longer.

I sharpen my edges when I notice that they’ve gotten a bit dull, that means most of the times I wax. Just a few light passes is enough to bring them back to full sharpness if I do it regularly so I prefer doing that. 

Posted by: @slarverjerry

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How often do you guys wax and sharpen your edges? 

As required for high performance.  

Sometimes the snow is fast and new wax is not needed for many days.  Other times, spring especially, there's a lot of friction and I'll wax every few days.  I know I need a wax when I get passed on the flats...  (Just kidding, I never get passed on the flats - but I can feel the friction there better than on the steeps.)

Same with edge sharpness.  If the groom is soft mid winter I don't really need razor sharp edges and I'll ignore them for weeks, but when it gets a little icy I'll do a quick pass every morning.

My new strategy is to never tune my boards.  I just sell them now after a few days and buy new prototypes!  (Half joking...  But I did actually get eight new boards from JJA this season and sold seven.  And there are two more on the way to me now; they're late but I might find some cold cord in the Rockies in May and do a few more days of test riding.  So when do I tune them?  Just before I box them of course!)

For waxing,

generally I need to  wax every 3-5 days of riding 6 hrs+ per day. You'll know when to wax when when the base of the board near the edges turn white.

Do so in order to avoid base burn and to prolong the longevity of your board / avoid a base grind because most of the time, I'm riding man-made snow - which is very abrasive. 

For sharpening, for the bare minimum, de-burr before waxing otherwise you will scratch up your iron.