Eddie Wall from TransWorld Snowboarding spends a couple of days at the Never Summer factory in Denver, CO. He is there to build a custom snowboard from scratch showing all of the approximately 200 processes involved. Day 1 is all about raw materials – starting with building the wood core.

It starts with a wooden block. The sidecuts are then cut out. Sidewalls are glued on and left to cure. The wooden block is then cut to produce around 7 snowboard cores. The cores are inspected and sanded before drilling out the insert holes. The deck is then sanded more to provide the right flex pattern and get it ready to have the rubber damping and carbon stringers applied.

Alot of the employees have been working building snowboards for a long time – making them true craftsmen. The centre of the core is marked – then templates used to mark the position for all the damping and carbon. The tip and tail are punched to trim them to shape. The next step is to prepare the base material. The die cut is like a giant cookie cutter which punches the design out of the base sheets. A similar system is used to cut out the snowboard outline in the base. The amount of custom tooling required to make each board is vast!

Once the base is cut and ready – it is placed on a template and the edge is applied. These are bent to shape by a machine specifically for the snowboard model and size being made. They are clipped on and super glued into place.

Next up – topsheets and graphics!