How to Wax a Shuffleboard for Game Play
How do you wax or prepare a brand new shuffleboard table for game play? First for standard maintenance we suggest using vinegar and water or Murphy’s soap. Then wax or buff board with a paste wax. These steps are required to maintain and to get an old board into playing condition. You may have a lot of grease build up from years of spray silicone, or perhaps some old paste wax build up. The purpose of a heavy duty cleaner or steps like these are to prepare an old board to get ready for a game of shuffleboard. So what do you do with a new McClure Handcrafted shuffleboard table you just got and are ready to play?
We recorded these three short videos about how you would go about preparing the board. The first step is there may be some packing dust from our warehouse and may want to just buff with a damp rag or we often use window cleaner like Windex. The new maple play board has a traditional finish that will last a lifetime for home use, but this is basically a thin coating of a plastic protectant. So the top is like or similar to a Formica or solid surface counter top. So keep the dust off and occasionally if you build up some silicone you can wipe down or spray with window cleaner to get a clean new top ready for play.
Step One is spray on a coat of McClure Shuffleboard Silicone spray by McClure Tables.
Spray Shuffleboard Silicone Spray
Step two is buff the silicone out so your board feels slick and you can feel the cloth or cotton towel sliding across the board with no friction
Step Two: Buff Silicone for Shuffleboard Table out
The Last and final step before your ready for an exciting game of shuffleboard on a handcrafted McClure Table is to apply the shuffleboard Wax. This is often the most confusing term for people as you would think of something like car wax or polish. However, it is more like sand, salt or dust. It is a powder we spread on like a lite snow fall to give a surface for the pucks to slide on top of. Do not apply shuffleboard table wax too thick or your pucks will plow.
How to Apply Shuffleboard Table Wax
If you want to learn more about shuffleboard game rules or how to play the Shuffleboard see our video.
When you begin and you brush off the old wax, do you then vacumn it out of the sides?
Hi Dan
Yes you should sweep off the old wax to get ready for a new game. You can let it build up in the side gully of the shuffleboard table but occasionally you should vacuum the carpet side aprons on your shuffleboard table.
I have an issue with our weights plowing the wax and leaving voids. Once the weight moves over these spots again they slow down almost to a complete stop. The same problem happens on the board where the weights are thrown from. The wax seems to get pushed aside. This problem is even worse when silicon is used????
What can i do to stop this????
50 year old american shuffleboard 26′ 8″ long playing area
Finish is good poly top coat
I would consider trying different wax here https://www.mccluretables.com/c-10-shuffleboard-wax-spray.aspx first and silicone spray, then possible you need new pucks.
One question I have is for ongoing
maintenance. After the initial application, you have clumpings and areas of wax powder buildup and dead spots. What is the best way of retreating the surface? Does one brush off the surface so that it is clean? Then apply a fresh silicone spray and more wax?
The clumping areas are usually tracking or plowing of the pucks through too much powder. Your solution of brush off and apply more wax is correct silicone can be applied more sparingly like one time per week or month depending on your play.
After you start a game, can you put more wax on the table in the middle of play?????
No this is not allowed only throwing wax from the gutters
I have a old Rock-Ola 22 ft table. I thought it should be sliding faster. Do you think I should thoroughly clean board first before applying silicone and wax? Or apply silicone and wax?
Yes you should
I just bought a new table, do I need to do anything other than put the wax/powder on to start to play?
You could use silicone spray but the wax is enough see the videos on this page
Our pucks at American Legion back up… start at a 3 then end up way past one ? What can I do to fix this ?? Table is level. This happens at both ends
Your end legs are slightly too high, you want them a little higher so the puck slows down but if backing up that much lower the end legs.
Hi,
We just got a wood worker to build us a shuffleboard table. It does not have a shinny finish on it. Would I still use a silicone spray?
The wood is walnut, if that helps
As long as their is a finish on the board the silicone spray will work.