How snowboards are made
A snowboard is stacked like a sandwich, base first and topsheet last, then squeezed in a heated press for about 15 minutes.
- stations
- 10
- things upstream
- 74
- raw sources
- 23
- steps from the ground
- 8
The short version
Layers go into an aluminum form from the bottom up: a plastic base with steel edges, epoxy, fiberglass, a tapered wood core, more fiberglass and a printed topsheet. A heated press cures the resin and squeezes out the excess. The raw slab is then trimmed, its base and edges are ground on belts, and the board gets a hot wax.
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Laminate a core block
Strips of wood are glued into a block that holds six to eight cores. Never Summer blends fast-growing paulownia with poplar, and puts beech in the high-stress zones.
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Saw the sidecut, slice the block
A band saw and a router cut the curved outline into the block. Most boards use a radius of 8 to 9 meters, which steers them through a turn. Plastic sidewalls are glued on and cure for 24 hours, and then the block is sliced into individual cores.
24-hour sidewall cure
Goes in -
Taper and drill each core
Mounting holes are drilled, and a programmable wide sander thins the core toward the nose and tail. Thickness is set to the millimeter, because it decides how the board flexes.
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Print base and topsheet
Burton silkscreens its graphics with water-based inks, one screen per color. Never Summer prints topsheet art on clay-based paper and uses a hot press to sublimate it into the plastic, so it cannot scrape off.
Goes in -
Bend edges around the base
The polyethylene base is cut to shape. Steel edge arrives as a long roll, is rough-shaped by machine, and is then bent around the base with crimping pliers and glued on.
Goes in -
Lay up in an aluminum form
The base goes into a machined aluminum form made for that model and size. On top go epoxy, rubber strips, fiberglass, more epoxy, the wood core, more fiberglass and resin, and the topsheet. An experienced builder can do this in 10 minutes.
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Cure in a heated press
Heat activates the epoxy and pressure squeezes the excess out. Burton's prototype shop cures boards for 10 to 15 minutes at about 70 pounds per square inch, and Never Summer for roughly 19 minutes. The mold also sets the camber or rocker and the upturned nose and tail.
about 70 psi for 10 to 15 minutes
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Trim the overhang
The board leaves the form as a square-edged slab. A technician follows the steel edge with a band saw to cut away the extra material, and the sidewall is then ground to its final shape.
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Grind base and edges
Sanding belts of decreasing coarseness flatten the base and remove hardened resin. At Burton a board can take as many as sixteen passes. The edges then get a one-degree bevel.
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Wax and inspect
A hot wax goes on the base. Never Summer's inspectors run a 20-point check before a board ships.
Worth repeating
- The direct ancestor of the snowboard was the 1965 Snurfer, which had no bindings. Riders held a looped nylon cord.
- Burton's first boards in the 1970s were single pieces of wood.
- Two colors of base plastic can be die-cut with the same logo and their pieces swapped like a puzzle, so one sheet gives both a graphic and a background.
Back to the ground
Follow every input upstream and snowboard starts as these 23 raw sources.
Everything it is made of See it on the map
Open the whole family tree
Keep walking
Sources
Cite this page: "How snowboards are made." Assembly Line, 2026-11-03. https://assemblyline.org/make/snowboard