It’s that time of year again, when all of your cool or cold water wax suddenly starts flaking off in chunks every time you touch your board. Yes, it’s summer.
I really don’t like stripping all my boards and re-doing the wax. It sucks. It’s messy, tiring, and once you’ve done it a few times the excitement just wears off and it becomes a bit of a chore. However there is one thing that has made this process at bit more fun and rewarding for me, and that is the Pickle.
You may have seen these at the surf shop and wondered what the heck it was for. Many probably just ignore it or think it’s a gimmick. Even my roommate says she doesn’t like it because she can just do the job with a paper towel.
Let me tell you, if you haven’t tried this little invention you need to pick one up today.
The Pickle lets you restore your board to it’s pristine, naked self with ease and satisfaction. Yes, I have used the paper towel method in the sun before, and it just sucks. Also, why waste all those paper towels? Also, liquid wax remover ALSO sucks. That stuff smells and smells forever, and can stain anything.
The Pickle is a pantyhose type of material filled with surfboard foam dust. Once you scrape off most of the wax from your board, the Pickle buffs it all off. The fiberglass dust inside dries and bonds with the wax making it rub off easily and without any residue left behind. It’s the perfect way to get the small amount of wax left behind that the scrapers don’t get, whether it’s wax on the rails or wax stuck in pressure dents.
Before I even knew what the Pickle was, I knew about the foam dust trick. Shapers have been doing it for years – picking up handfuls of foam dust from board shaping and using it to get wax off old boards. The Pickle makes this process tidier and also removes the need to be buddies with a shaper giving you foam dust on the side.
They’re not expensive and I always have one on hand for wax removals. If I’m going to remove the wax, I’m getting ALL of it. It also helps clean up the board from the dreaded Chinese Wax Job (wax on the underside of the board, usually from stacking boards), dirty wax on the nose and rails of shortboards, and the annoying wax left in pressure dings.
After using the Pickle the board looks years younger and fresh off the surf shop rack.
There’s not too much else to say, but give it a try. You can find them at your local surf shop or if they are hard to find by you check online.
Isn’t foam dust a toxic & harmful substance?
The foam dust inside eventually comes out and then the pickle doesn’t work well anymore. I refilled mine with cornmeal from the grocery store, works good as new.