Snowboarding Term paper

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Snowboarding is the worldís fastest growing winter sport and is set to become even more popular than skiing. It is still a

young sport and there are many people eager to learn more about the enjoyment the sport has to offer.

Without going to a mountain and taking a few lessons it is hard to fully appreciate what the sport really is, and the

sensation that riding a snowboard gives. Hopefully, my report will tell everything a person would need to know about

equipment, so that they can go try the sport out for themselves. I also plan to give a bit of background information on

competition, so that people can realize where the sport can lead to.

The first snowboard ever marketed was produced by Shervin Popper, in 1964. It was a crude model put together in his

garage, after he saw his daughter trying to go down a hill on a sled standing up. It consisted of two of children skis strapped

together, with some doweling on the top for foot attraction. His daughter took it to the local sledding hill, and soon enough

all the kids wanted one.

He and his wife in the next ten years sold one hundred thousand of these contraptions for 15 dollars a piece. with new

improvements such as a string at the tip for balance and a more stable base, it was dubbed the "Snurfer", a mix with snow

and surfer, because of its no-binding surf style of riding.

Another pioneer was Dimitrije Milovich, a surfer from the east coast. He made his invention because of the lack of warm

water in the winter. This board also had no bindings, to stick with the surf philosophy, but it included iron edges. In the early

seventies Milovich began limited production of these custom boards.

Also in 1972, Bob Webber received a patent for his "SkiBoard," another board directly from the surf idea.

In 1975, Dimitrije Milovich developed the Winterstick, a historic brand famous for the first videos of snowboards being

ridden in powder. He started production of the "Swallowtail" design for riding in deep powder, often using iron edges on his

earlier boards. During the following two years Dimitrije also reached an important agreement with Petit Morey and Kendall,

the two main insurance companies of American ski resorts, to cover liability for snowboarding.

In 1977 the main snowboard company for today started production; Jake Burton made and sold his prototypes with

handmade bindings. These included some elements similar to modern design. Tom Sims also started production of some

boards based on the Snurfer. In 1979 Tom Sims and Chuck Barfoot created the first board made of fiberglass.

At the end of the seventies the beginning of the eighties, the snowboard begin to appear in some sports magazines

(especially skateboard magazines,) and on American and Canadian TV. A beer commercial showed Paul Graves riding a

snowboard. This introduced the snowboard to the public, although it was still considered a strange sport.

Now that snowboards were allowed on some mountains, the board needed to be redesigned so that it would work on

packed snow. Shaped wood can slide along on a hill deep powder, and it could turn pretty good, but it still was slow and

hard to turn on packed snow.

In 1980 to 1981 the three main snowboard companies, Burton, Sims, and Winterstick begin to produce fiberglass boards

with P-tex bases, as well as metal edges. The same year the Struck Brothers produced a board with two small skis on the

bottom. Called the Swingbo, it was easier to carve and turn on packed snow.

Now that problems with steering and friction were solved, real bindings needed to be built for better control. Jeff Grell built

the first bindings with a back spoiler to hold the legs on back-side turns. This allowed the snowboard to take off in public.

This was the beginning of the standard snowboard. Now snowboard manufacturers are taking ideas from the past and

using them to create fine tuned boards that work specifically for the rider. There are a few materials and technologies that

every manufacturer uses. Among these are camber, P-tex, flex, Poly MDI and others.

Flex is the ability of the board to bend; a stiff flex is for a race board because it allows for better performance at high

speeds; a smooth flex is for a beginner board because it is easier to drive the board when it contours to the land. How the

flex is distributed along the board is also important; a board with varying levels of flex along the board doesnít allow the

board to make round turns, unless it is on a specialized board, for example, a real extreme park board would have softer

flex at the tips to absorb landings.

Camber is the bridge of the board. You can see this if the board is put on a flat surface: the distance between the ground

and the center of the board defines the camber. A board isnít usually flat, and a high camber means a better

responsiveness, which can also make the board nervous. Often, race alpine boards have a high camber for quick edge to

edge turns, while a freestyle board would have a low camber for an easier slide.

Sidecut is what makes a snowboard a snowboard, instead of one big ski. The side cut is the imaginary radius of a circle that

you can draw on the side of the board. It measures the difference of the length between the tip, center, and tail. A deep

sidecut allows for short turns and better arced carving. This is why skiers are now beginning to carve long arcs, it was made

possible by the snowboard-induced sidecut.

When snowboard companies found out about the importance of flex, sidecut, and camber, nine basic materials began being

used. They could be manipulated or have substitutions, depending on what the board was supposed to do. These parts

were wood or foam, fiberglass, poly MDI, epoxy matrix, polietilene (a.k.a. P-tex or PE), flacee or ABS, Fenolo-reinforced poly

MDI or P-tex, steel inserts, and steel with rubber dampening.

Wood or foam makes up the core of the board. Usually the core is made of different types of wood, stiff and light to make

the board flexible and durable. Wood needs to be laminated vertically so that the glue doesnít play too important a role in

the boardís performance, and so the board will keep itís characteristics over time. This process is more expensive than the

process to make a board with a foam core.

A foam core is cheaper than wood. It can also be produced an a larger scale easier. The only problem is that it isnít as

durable as a wood core, and it often needs to be reinforced with materials such as Kevlar.

There are many variations of the size, shape, and placement of the core within the board. For example, a board with most of

the core in the center of the board would spin easier, because there would be no counterweight to slow the spin.

Fiberglass is used in all boards over and under the core to increase stiffness and to keep the board from deforming. The

process of putting all the layers together is called lamination. Fiberglass is a woven structure which is usually "Biaxle,"

meaning there are two directions in the weave, but even better is "Triaxle," which has three.

Poly MDI is a polymeric matrix that gives the board good flexibility over time. The epoxy matrix is the glue used to stick parts

of the board together in the laminating process. It has a good shock resistance, is lightweight, and has a long life of rigidity.

Polietilene, PE, or P-tex is used as the base. This porous structure is for retaining wax. Wax is an important part of the

board that is supplied and maintained by the owner. The purpose of wax is not to cover up the base but to get absorbed

into it. Hot wax works the best out of that, spray on or rub on waxes. The base can be made with extruded P-tex or sintered

P-tex. The extruded is made of a sort of paper P-tex, and is the quicker and cheaper method of making a base, but a

sintered base absorbs wax better. A sintered base is made by powdering extruded base material, and re-compacting it into

the base. The sintered base goes faster because of better wax absorption and it handles shock better. Another

characteristic of the base is the molecular weight or the UHMW. A higher molecular weight means better absorption of the

wax, and an overall better performance. The fastest base is usually used on race boards, and it is made of graphite, giving it

a black color. It isnít really common, because only top-notch race boards use it. If there are graphics on the bottom they are

"Tattooed" into the fiberglass so they can be seen through the P-tex.

Steel inserts are the holes that you see on the top of a board that has no bindings on it. They are the holes that bindings

screw into. They are imbedded into the fiberglass and are very strongly rooted into the board. They come in three basic

patterns. The basic 4 by 4 patterns is 8 aligned inserts on each half of the board. Almost every board uses this pattern.

Next is Burtonís 3-d insert pattern. It only requires that three screws go into the board per binding. The up side to this is

the thousands of stance possibilities that can come out of this pattern, the down side is that a lot of binding plates donít fit

this pattern. The third is not very popular, it has a weird set of holes that are meant only to be filled by baseless bindings,

which only have screw holes on weird parts of the edges. It is not extremely common. Maybe 1 out of 20 boards have it, if

not less.

The shiny layer that you can see on the top of a board is called the top sheet. Usually itís made of flacee or ABS, two

extremely hard materials that are very difficult to cut. Underneath it there are usually graphics that can be put under the

top sheet by printing them out on a special sheet of plastic that goes between the fiberglass and the top sheet.

Side walls are the narrow sides between the top sheet and the base on the edges. The strength of this component is very

important because if they are punctured, water can enter the core and rot it out.

Around the edges is a metal strip of metal, usually steel, that allow the board a good hold on ice and protection for the

board. These strips are called the edges. Between the edge and the bottom of the side wall there is a layer of dampening,

often made of rubber, to absorb the shocks and vibrations coming from the edge. The edges can wrap all the way around

the board, or they can stop just before the tip and tail. Edges that are not fully wrapped are just becoming popular. It used

to be believed that metal on the tip or tail would help protect the board against hitting something, like say, a rock. But really

the edges would bend into the board causing even mare damage. Now with exposed, dampened, and reinforced tips and

tails, the board can pop back into place after a crash.

There are many things that can be added, but those depend on what company you look at. Morrowís boards have high-tech

spring rails along the inner edges that make the board ollie higher and absorb landings better. K2 and many other

companies have "Torsion Forks" in their tip and tail to help ollie and absorb landings. They actually move inside the board.

K2 is coming out with a board that has electronic sensors with "Smart" technology in them that turn vibrations into energy,

lighting up light emitting diodes in different areas of the board. New things are invented each year for snowboards. What

will be next? Nobody knows.

Structure is how the parts of the board is put together, this is also known as construction. There are 3 main ways to

construct a snowboard, but there are hundreds of different variations that differ from company to company.

Sandwich construction is the most common way to make boards, as well as skis. The core, side walls, and top sheet (as well

as other materials) are put in a press and sandwiched together with the epoxy. The process of putting the components

together in any board is called lamination. Sometimes boards are laminated vertically, which allows extra epoxy to be

drained from the board, and so that the epoxy doesnít play too important a role in absorbing shock.

Many boards now use cap construction. In this method, the top sheet continues down the side of the board to cover the

side walls, and meet the edges. This makes the board look better, and it gives better protection to the side walls. It is also

easier to cut the materials to the cap construction shape than the sandwich method.

Monocoque is the third type of construction. The theory behind it is that it allows forces to be better transferred to the

edges than they would be in the sandwich structure. The Monocoque construction is kind of like cap construction, only there

are extra added materials, such as dampening, to try to direct shock to the edges of the board.

Various shapes and components...

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