History of Snow Boarding

History of Snowboarding

Snowboarding is the world's 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. This essay will talk about: the inventors and how they made there invention, the fabrication of building the board, the styles of boards, and the styles of bindings. In this essay it will not discuss and compare snowboarding with today. Hopefully, my report will tell all the history that happened that brought snow boarding to today.

The first snowboard like invention was made in 1929 by M.J. "Jack" Burchett. He cut out a plank of plywood and secured his feet with a length of clothesline and some horse reins. The first "Snowboard" was invented(Snowboarding).Before the next step was taken, it had to wait over 30 years until 1963("History").In this year Tom Sims , a student in the eighth grade , constructed what he called a "Ski Board," for a class project(Basics)Two years later Shervin Popper had marketed the first snowboard which he called "The Snurfer." 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 children's 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 ("History").Another inventor 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, but it included iron edges (Beginning).In the early seventies Milovich began limited production of these custom boards ("History").

In 1977 the main snowboard company for today started production. Jake Burton made and sold his prototypes with handmade bindings (Bennett 15). These included some elements similar to the modern design. Tom Sims also started production of some boards ("Snowboarding" 476). In 1979 Tom Sims and Chuck Barfoot created the first board made of fiberglass ("History"). At the end of the seventies and the beginning of the eighties, the snowboard began to appear in some sports magazines and on American and Canadian TV. A beer commercial showed Paul Graves riding a snowboard (Basics). 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 (Beginning). Shaped wood can slide along on a hill of deep powder, and it could turn pretty good, but it still was slow and hard to turn on packed snow (Howe 96).

In 1980 and 1981 the three main snowboard companies, Burton, Sims, and John Winterstick began to produce fiberglass boards with polietilene (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 ("History"). When snowboard companies found out about the importance of flex, side cut, and camber, nine basic materials began being used (Basics). 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 ("History"). Wood needs to be laminated vertically so that the glue doesn't mess up the board's performance, and so the board will keep it's characteristics over time. This process is more expensive than the process to make a board with a foam core ("History"). A foam core is cheaper than wood. It can also be produced an a larger scale easier. The only problem is that it isn't as durable as a wood core, and it often needs to be reinforced with materials such as Kevlar ("Snowboarding" 477). 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 ("History"). Fiberglass is used in all boards over and under the core to increase stiffness and to keep the board from deforming (Beginning). 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("Snowboarding" 480). 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 lacking flexibility. Steel inserts are the holes that you see on the top of a board that has no bindings on it ("History"). They are the holes that bindings screw into. They are imbedded into the fiberglass and are very strongly rooted into the board (Basics). They come in three basic patterns. The basic 4 by 4 pattern is 8 aligned inserts on each half of the board. Almost every board uses this pattern. Next is Burton's 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 don't 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 (Bennett 17).

The shiny layer that you can see on the top of a board is called the top sheet. Usually it's 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(Snowboarding).

Side walls are the narrow sides between the top sheet and the base on the edges. The strength of this piece is very important because if they are punctured, water can enter the core and rot it out.

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