Yellow spots on the base of my board

Question

The yellow spots on my   Hello. I've recently tuned the base of my snowboard and after removing the P-tex wax, there were these yellow spots on many areas of the base. I heard you were suppost to have the wax really close to the board so the flame is blue and roll the stick but at the time, I didn't know that. What I'm trying to ask is how do I remove the yellow spots on my board?

Answer
Hey Tyler,

You have presented me with a few questions as to what your spots are. I'm trying to figure out the cause first.

You mention 'P-tex' wax. We're you trying to fill in some shallow gouges? P-tex is normally a similar material to bases and is used to repair gouges. It is applied in the manner you describe ie; clean blue flame, rolling the p-tex stick to get even melting, holding the stick close to the gouge, letting the p-tex flow into the gouge. When cooled, the p-tex excess can be scraped with a sharp edged steel blade and then smoothed out with increasingly finer sandpaper.

Now to the ?'s. We're you doing gouge repairs? If so, when you were done, did you throughly clean the base with a good base cleaner? Did you also use a good wax remover to remove all the old wax?

Your yellow spots look like you either had a very dirty base, old wax that discolored when the new wax re melted it, or your new wax was maybe old and possibly contaminated.

Not knowing exactly what was done, the only solution I can offer up is this; Take your board to a reputable shop and have them look at it. They may have a few different ideas but it seems to me that a 'base grind' is what will remove all the spots and restore the base to a like new condition. A base grind should only be done once or twice in the life of a board as it removes a thin layer of base and edge material. But your base and edges will be like new. Then the shop can do a light edge file to restore the sharpness of the edges and then have them give it a good hot wax to seal the new base.

If you are a do-it-yourselfer for your board care, the other option (cheaper) is to live with the spots until you are ready for a fresh hot wax. Then use a good wax remover, and then a good base cleaner. If the spots remain, you could use a sharp edged steel scraper and lightly scrape the spots. A light sanding could be done to help remove the spots. Take care to not create shallow spots in your base. Be sure to clean the base after any scraping and sanding with the base cleaner. Then give it a good hot wax. If your wax was old, spend a few bucks on a new package of wax.

From what I can tell from your pics, somehow, things got contaminated and your spots are the result. This is just my speculation so take it for what it is, a humble opinion. A good shop could probably give you more informed advice as they can physically examine the board to help determine what is going on.

Hope this helps.
Keep on riding,
Windlover