Now that it’s January , I’m looking forward to getting back into regular surfing some, not just bodyboarding on my Beater board. One board that’s probably going to be on the bench for a while- while my ankle finishes healing- is my 6’10″funshape. I REALLY love this board, but I think I’ll need to break out the stable longboard more often until I build up some strength.

So, in the meantime, I wanted to paint some more sea creatures on it, since I just had the seadragon on it I painted this year, like what I did in my last post. It is like getting new tattoos, kind of addictive. But, no pain. The only tattoos I’ll be adding to is on the surfboard.

My friend and I waxed it with some blue  and yellow color wax to jazz it up some over the

blazingly hot Florida Summer this year. I loved the colors, and it really stood out.

Now that I want to repaint it, the wax’s gotta come off. There’s A LOT to come off, but I scraped it off well.

However, this groovy looking wax left a not-so-nice trace of blue tinge behind after scraping it off. Super. 

My favorite wax remover is the Pickle. Essentially, it’s surfboard foam dust in hosiery. I’ve actually made some in the past, it’s a super easy DIY, but for some reason, I’m partial to the Pickle. It must be the hosiery they use, or the grade of the dust, who knows? I just like them better. Dennis at Core Surf even had one for me that was *like* the Pickle, that I used for this project, so it’s RED instead of green. Boo. It’s called the “Fireball.”

It did okay, but the blue stain remains, especially the stripe over the seadragon, and over the area on the tail where I had applied spray traction (Monster Grip). Sheesh. Lesson learned, no more color wax for me.

But, I did get to do some research on what would get a stain off! First, I tried some Sticky Bumps Wax Remover. I’m not thrilled about using any chemicals, but I thought it would be best to give it a shot.

Got some blue up, but not much. I started to suspect this might be a baked in STAIN from all the Summer heat. I even tried NON-acetone nail polish remover. Got some more off.

I also found out from Dennis at Core Surf that my surfboard is sealed even after it’s glassed. Because of this, I could get away with a *hair* of sanding.

Enter the Magic Eraser (or whatever melamine sponges are named these days). Not my first pick to try to remove a surfboard stain, but I was willing to give it a go. It technically micro-sands the surface, which is why it’s effective at cleaning.

I had to end up using a fresh one to scrub, and I mean SCRUB. Like I’m fine sanding it. Which, in essence, I am.

It worked very well. The stain was greatly reduced, but I can still see it. That means a bigger repaint job’s going to happen soon.

On the very tail of the board, I had to scrape the spray on traction off with a blade, since the traction stained VERY easily.

I did more scrubbing/sanding with the Magic Eraser, but figured that was about as good as it was going to get for me to paint it. I’m going to have to get creative with my coverup paint job. Looking forward to it. 

After I paint, I will need to use spray sealer to keep the paint job in place, so anything I scraped/sanded off in the cleaning process will be replaced.

So, in my best Mommie Dearest voice, 

“NO MORE COLOR WAX!!!” Hehe. Kinda.