If you are a typical snowboarder, you want to be a bit unique and stand out on the slopes. One way to do this is with your choice of snowboard apparel. However, another very popular ways to do this is to custom paint your snowboard.

You can do this yourself, if you have the time and patience. Basically, to do a good job, you have to follow four steps – preparing the board, priming the board, painting it, and sealing it.

However, to start with, you will need a good work area. There are advantages to painting both indoors or outdoors. If you have an indoor work area, make sure that the ventilation system is good enough to exhaust the paint fumes from the area. If your work area is located outdoors, your main concern will be finding a non-windy area where the air currents are small or non-existent so they won’t interfere with your paint job.

To ensure that the board is clean, wipe the dirt off the surface to be painted with a clean damp rag. You also want to remove any wax build up. Any good wax remover from your local hardware or grocery store should do the job. Then, you want to scuff the surface of the board with fine sandpaper. This will prepare it to receive the primer coat. And, finally, plug up the binding holes with q-tips to prevent paint or primer from clogging them.

Once the prep work is done, priming is relatively easy. simply spray it on according to the directions on the spray can. Basically, however, you want to avoid over priming the board. So, rather than trying to do everything with one pass, if necessary, do multiple light passes until you have covered the board well. The important thing is to keep the spray can moving so you don’t have primer build-up in spots. Then let the primer dry.

When painting the snowboard, first lay down the background colors – again using multiple light layers, if necessary instead of one heavy layer. When you are satisfied with the density and colors of the background, then you can use stencils to apply any designs or logos on the board.

The next to last step is to seal the board by clear coating it. This is usually a multi-phase process as you will want to apply three to four coats on the board.

Finally, to give your board that nice glossy finish, get some rubbing compound from your local auto supply shop and give the surface a nice buffing.

Article originally published at Source by Jim Garza