technical resource technical resource
the ABC's of your mean, lean riding machine, your personal stance and your footprint on it all!
BOARD CONSTRUCTION: The breakdown
There are some basic components that go into the construction of a snowboard. Each snowboard has a base, an outer edge, a core and a top sheet. There are generally 2 methods by which a snowboard is constructed: Capped and Traditional Sandwich.
A Capped Sandwich Snowboard is the board you want to rock out on a super cold day when you are dealing with hard packed snow. This snowboard has a top sheet pinched over the sides of the snowboard, meeting the steel edge. Some designers say that Cap Construction enhances edge hold on hard snow (hello East Coast riding!!) and generally improves board responsiveness.
Traditional Sandwich Laminated Construction
A snowboard constructed with the Traditional Sandwich Laminated Construction method is flat, with the armor plating on the sides provided by separate sidewalls.
Top Sheet
The top layer of a Snowboard is a protective plastic layer called a "top sheet." The top sheet not only protects the insides of the snowboard from damage and exposure to ultra-violet rays, it also provides a good surface for upper graphics. Although the material used for the top sheet can vary, there are basically two types of top sheets - glossy and matte. Glossy top sheets usually come with sublimated graphics, while matte top sheets generally have screened-on graphics.
Peeling Back (in a bad way): Delaminating refers to when a snowboard’s top sheet peels upward due to a hard collision or manufacturing defect.
Sidewall: ride ‘em hard ladies!
The sidewall is the material running around the perimeter of your board between your topsheet and your base and can be composed of a multitude of materials from plastic to urethane.
Core: This is where the good stuff lives. The material in your core keeps it all together and allows you to ride hard without worries.
The Core of a snowboard, which lies beneath the fiberglass, is the component which most contributes to its performance, determining how much pop, flex, torsion and tilt a snowboard has. Just like your body, the core of a snowboard is integral to its performance, so treat both with some TLC. The weight, thickness and durability of the core determine the riding characteristics of the board. Most cores are built from vertically laminated strips of wood. The core makes up most of the thickness of the snowboard and is usually made of wood foam, honeycomb panels or a combination of wood and other composite materials, with sets of metal inserts needed to mount bindings. Snowboard cores made from honeycomb are lightweight and are surprisingly strong. With a wood core, you can be assured of a smooth response and lively flex from the board. Foam cores, in contrast, can sometimes loose their flex.
Underneath the core is another layer of fiberglass, "fiberglass reinforced plastic" in particular. This provides stiffness and strength to the Snowboard.
Chatter refers to unnecessary vibration while riding a snowboard due to high speeds, tight turns and/or icy conditions. We promise the last think you want while speeding down an icy hill is vibration, really, we swear! It negatively affects board control and is reduced using a damping material in the core construction of the board.
Dampening is the technique of reducing vibration of a snowboard in order to increase handling at high speeds, tight turns and/or icy conditions. Some boards have a dampening material such as rubber or cork laminated into the core of the snowboard.
Effective Edge: Edges of Steel, for real.
Following the fiberglass are steel edges. These edges surround the base of the snowboard, allowing the board to dig into the snow while turning. There are actually two kinds of Edges: partial steel edges that run only along the sides of the board, ending at the nose and tail, and edges that wrap all the way around both ends of the board.
The Effective Edge is the part of the snowboard’s edge that actually makes contact with the snow and does not extend fully to its tip or tail. When turning, a rider’s weight is shifted on to the effective edge.
Base:
The bottom or Base of a snowboard is most often made of a layer of ultra high molecular weight polyethylene material commonly called "P-Tex." This is a dense, abrasion resistant plastic with low friction properties providing the slippery surface needed to slide on snow. The most common P-Tex bases are either extruded or sintered. Some snowboards used specifically for racing have a ‘graphite’ base, which is created by adding graphite to the polyethylene pellets.
On a snowboard with an Extruded Base, the P-Tex is cut from a large sheet, or squeezed out of a machine much like "play-do". As a low maintenance base, it is the least expensive and easy to repair. Extruded bases are smoother and less porous than other bases. They do not saturate well with wax and tend to slide slower than other bases. However, if left unwaxed, an extruded base does not lose much overall performance. So if you are a bit lazy an extruded base is the way to go.
When making a Sintered Base, the P-Tex material is ground to powder, reformed with pressure and heat and cut to shape. A sintered base is very porous and absorbs wax well. A snowboard with a sintered base will slide faster than one with an extruded base when waxed, but will be slower if left unwaxed for a long period. They are more expensive and harder to repair, but more durable and are often found on higher performance snowboards.
Womens Bataleon Snowboard feature Triple Base Technology. A snowboard with triple base technology is flat between the bindings and along the middle towards the nose and tail. Along the edges of the nose and tail section, the base is lifted from 0 degrees to max 3.5 degrees. The base angle is greatest where the nose and tail are widest. The snowboard will thus have only 40% edge contact when riding flat (when you hardly need any) and full edge contact in turns (when you actually need it).
Camber is the curvature of the center portion of a snowboard between nose and tail, when resting on its base and placed on a flat surface. Camber is measured by looking at the amount of space between the center of the base and the flat surface on which it rests. This curvature in the snowboard effectively aids in turning, ripping, and laying down serious hard lines on the hill.
SNOWBOARD SHAPES: Like us ladies, snowboards come in all shapes and sizes.
Modern snowboards have three main shapes: directional, true twin and directional-twin (sometimes called semi-directional).
Directional: Free wheeling all-over-the-hill and into-everything kinda riding ladies, this is the board for you.
A purely directional board serves best for freeriding. It will have a softer nose for easier initiation into turns, a stiffer tail to snap you out of turns, allowing no loss of speed when entering the transition between turns, basically allowing you to whip out some nice tricks at the drop of a hat. The nose will be slightly longer and wider than the tail. Also, the hole pattern will be offset back on the board to, along with the wider nose, increase the ease of turn initiation and offer better flotation in powder. This is a stable shape, but not one for a rider who rides backwards or switch/ fakie a lot.
True Twin: You like to ride goofy, regg’y and then back again, while poaching off a kicker and grinding a rail? A twin's got your name written all over it.
A true twin tip is symmetrical in shape from the center of the board out towards the tip and tail. It is used by boarders who mainly freestyle in the park. A twin tip has a centered stance and a forgiving, softer flex all the way through. Both of these features make for a good board to ride switch/ fakie and spin in the air, but not to freeride on.
Directional Twin: This board is for the girl that likes to mix up, play both sides of the game on the hill.
A Directional Twin can be considered to be the hybrid of the other two shapes. A directional twin is more inclined for a boarder who likes to use the whole mountain, while throwing in a bit of freestyle riding. It will usually have a soft nose and stiff tail, with a true twin tip shape. While not the best at straight freeriding, this shape works well as an all-purpose board.
Contact points are the four points on a snowboard that are in constant contact with the snow, acting as one of the pivot points when turning. These points can be seen at the edge of a board’s sidecut, near the nose and tail.
The flexibility (“flex”) of a snowboard affects its handling and typically varies with the rider's weight. Usually, a softer flex makes turning easier while a harder flex makes the board more stable at high speeds. There is currently no standard way to quantify snowboard stiffness, but novices and boarders who mostly do park tricks tend to prefer a softer flex, racers, a stiffer flex, and everyone else something in between.
Torsional flex is a measurement of how flexible the snowboard is across its width. The greater the torsional flex the easier it is twist the snowboard. This flex makes it possible to make sharper turns.
Longitudinal flex is a measurement of the amount of flex in the snowboard from tip to tail. Longitudinal flex allows the snowboard to bend along its length. This flex allows the snowboard to contour itself to ramps and other obstacles.
Sidecut: Throw down a sick heel side to toe side turn, whip around and look at you marks. It's all about the side cut ladies- this is the way to leave your mark for the boys to gawk and shake their heads in awe.
A snowboard’s sidecut is the shape of the arc that creates the edge of a snowboard. The shape of the sidecut controls how the board turns. A deeper sidecut creates a more aggressive turning board (for tighter turns) and a shallower sidecut will be more forgiving when turning.
Sidecut radius is the radius of the circle used to cut the shape of the side of the board. The sidecut radius directly affects the radius of carving turns and the responsiveness of the board.
A new development in snowboard geometry is the introduction of Magne-Traction by Lib-Tech (found in Salomon Snowboards) - seven specialized bumps strategically sized and placed along each side of your sidecut, creating edges that are wavy and serrated. Lib-Tech suggests that Magne-Traction will give a snowboard extra edge hold, by providing more contact points with the snow, even if a snowboard is de-tuned for park riding. The GNU B-Pro BTX snowboard and GNU B-Street BTX snowboard both feature Magne-traction, as well as Banana traction.
SIZING: Ladies know size DOES matter. Unfortunately, there is more to choosing a board than which graphics you love. Follow these rules until you are dialed in to your riding style, then you can break them to customize your riding equipment.
The Truth: Time to hit the scales, it will be worth because you will be able to customize your ride.
A snowboard’s size should correspond to the rider’s weight, then height, shoe size, as well as riding style and skill level. Every snowboard has a suggested rider weight range corresponding to its length. A rider who places herself at the top of a snowboard’s weight range will get a board with a softer flex and likewise, at the bottom of the weight range, will get a stiffer flex.
The Myth: A snowboard should not be chosen based on where the edge falls when held up to ones face, chin, nose, etc; the rider will only end up with a completely inappropriately sized board. A snowboard reacts to only two factors, how much pressure is being applied to it (weight) and where that pressure is coming from (shoe size/ stance). Boards are designed around riders of a certain weight. The total weight range for a given board will be around 50 pounds (although manufacturers tend to exaggerate this range to make their products sellable to a wider variety of customers).
BINDINGS AND STANCE
Stance is like a model's signature walk - you need to tweak it till you own it. It's all about personality, style and riding skills.
Stance refers to how one’s feet are positioned on a snowboard, as in regular or goofy footed, but also refers to the placement and angles of the bindings.
Stance width impacts the rider’s balance on a snowboard. The size of the rider is an important factor, as well as the style of their riding, when determining a proper stance width. A common measurement used for new riders is to position the bindings so that the feet are placed a little wider than shoulder width apart. However, personal preference and comfort are important and most experienced riders will adjust the stance width to personal preference.
A wider stance, common for freestyle riders, gives more stability when landing a jump or jibbing a rail, a.k.a. impressing everyone around her. Control in a wider stance is reduced when turning on the piste. Conversely, a narrow stance will give the rider more control when turning on the piste but less stability when freestyling. A narrow stance is more common for riders looking for quicker turn edge-hold (i.e. small radius turns). The narrow stance will give the rider a concentrated stability between the bindings allowing the board to dig into the snow quicker than a wider stance so the rider is less prone to wash out and more prone to carving out some sweet turns. Most riders choose a stance width somewhere in between a wide and narrow stance.
The Nitty Gritty Terms of Stancin’ IT:
Regular or Goofy? Not just a joke- it’s super important to know which way you feel most comfortable barreling down the hill.
Regular-Footed refers to riding a snowboard with the left foot in the forward/ downhill position.
Goofy-Footed refers to riding a snowboard with the right foot in the forward/ downhill position.
Duck-footed describes stance/ binding angles with the riders’ toes pointed outward like a duck.
A snowboard’s hole pattern is the layout of holes on the top of a snowboard, through which the bindings are fastened and stance is set. Both three- and four-hole patterns are standard, but most snowboard companies use the 4-hole pattern.
Bindings
The Baseplate of the binding is the foundation between a rider’s boot and their board. Baseless bindings lack a baseplate. There is often a Disc, a round device, centered in your baseplate that both affixes your binding to your board, but also allows you to adjust your binding angles.
