Wax-Off! - Beeswax

Today I took another trip to Merthyr Mawr in the South of Wales, but this time the weather was more acceptable and there hadn't been any rain for a few hours beforehand.

I tried to go down a dune and go for a few runs, I still couldn't do well despite the sand being dry, I didn't understand if I bought a bad board or whether the sand still needed to dry.

Except, last week I ordered some beeswax online (I didn't go for branded waxes as they're manufactured in the United States and they would have taken a long time to arrive), I chose beeswax because of my article I wrote on waxes before, beeswax is a natural product so it's not created with petroleum oils which could potentially not make me slide at all, and it was the most abundant to find at the time of my online shopping experience!

I bought some bars of 100% pure and natural Beeswax and I can single-handedly say that Beeswax is the "Bees Knees"! It's good if you're on a tight budget, and most importantly, it gives you an excellent run, fast descent, high speeds... Basically, it lets you go fast; However, it does lack when it comes to giving you the ability to curve as it makes the board extremely slippery all over and I did have to re-apply the wax every other run; but re-applying the wax very often isn't so bad when you consider that the wax lasts so long, it's a natural product, and from a fresh bar of the stuff, I had only used ½ to 1cm of Beeswax during a whole 2 hour session.

"Pure Natural Beeswax Blocks" by Jack Soley is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

Also, an unrelated note but useful if you're thinking about making your own wax at home; Beeswax is easy to clean up compared to candle wax and wax from Edam cheese.

Pros of Beeswax

It allows you to go fast almost immediately, cheap, easy to obtain, a naturally ocurring product, protects your board from light & deep scratches, and lasts long during sessions.


Cons of Beeswax

Requires constant re-application, and it is extremely slippery so if you're trying to do some tricks or if you're a beginner, you're out of luck.

Overall Opinion

Given the good features and bad features of this particular method of waxing a board, this is the first ever Sandboard wax I've used (that has worked) with good results that are so good I can immediately report on them the day I got back from the dunes! I would definitely reccomend Beeswax as a wax to use on your board and I give Beeswax an 8 out of 10!

Also before I conclude, I have uploaded a video online titled "How To Wax A Sandboard" featuring my session yesterday at Merthyr Mawr, I hope you find it interesting.