There is and interesting article in the September/October 2010 issue of Deep Magazine about surf wax. It got me to thinking how things were before surf wax.

First off you didn’t get wax for your surfboard at the local surf shop, you got it at the grocery store. It wasn’t called surf wax it was Paraffin wax. Actually you might have gotten it from your mom or grand mother if they did any canning of fruits and vegetables.

My wife’s grandma used to make jams and jellies…. Good stuff, but when you opened a jar of her jelly for the first time you had to pry and scrape off the wax that sealed the jelly to keep it from spoiling. The wax she used was the same thing we used on our surfboards before surf wax was available.

Paraffin is hard, and it didn’t go on a surfboard easy like the surf wax of today. Waxing your board for the first time was a big undertaking compared to now. It worked best if you got the bar of wax warm and soft. Then if you rubbed it on the board with just the right pressure you could slowly build up a base and get an OK layer of wax down.

If you lived and surfed in warm water and climates paraffin wasn’t to terrible but in colder conditions the stuff would get sum what slick and slippery. Nothing worse than being in the water and having your board get a little slippery, take off on a wave, slip and fall on your first turn. Then if you couldn’t catch your board when you fell you may be in for a swim to the beach. I hated that!

Problem was after retrieving your board rubbing some fresh wax on it wouldn't necessarily make things better. What I would usually do after retrieving my board is grab a hand full of wet sand and rub that into the wax. The sand would get imbedded into the wax and render the wax dirty but not so slippery any more.

There were no wax combs back then either but I did use a hair comb to scratch the stiff hard wax. That helped too but it wasn't to comfortable to lay on, but we mostly knee paddled.

It was nice when surf board specific wax came around. It wasn’t the easiest stuff to get a nice bead of wax on your board with at first. It would kind of spread down in an awkward way without really beading up nicely. You had to work with the stuff and rub with the right touch to get a good clean layer down.

According to the article in Deep it wasn’t until the early nineties that the surf wax guys found a formula that made the wax bead up nicely. Yeah, the wax of today is great. It goes down on your board quickly with a nice sticky bump to it. When it gets dirty you can scrap it off and put down a fresh coat without much effort.

We don’t think about it but the wax of today has helped us all surf better. We can do things on a surfboard now that would not be possible with the old slippery stiff grocery store stuff. So, to the guys that worked up the surf wax formulas… Thank you!

D.R.

Funny I still have a box of the old stuff.