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Front Page  General News Factory Tour: A Look Inside Never Summer
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Factory Tour: A Look Inside Never Summer |
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Tuesday, 24 July 2007 |
Factory Tour: A Look inside Never Summer
I recently had the opportunity to tour the Never Summer facility with Tracey and Tim Canaday, the team of brothers behind Never Summer Industries. They’ve been been bringing the world cutting-edge snowboards since 1991. With close ties to the materials industry, they seek every edge so their boards are the pinnacle of both performance and durability. In the last year, the Canadays have been finding application for the wealth of knowledge they’ve built up in their snowboard business to create a growing line of technically advanced longboards.
This ’07 Never Summer lineup is built on the same principles their snowboards have been built on for years: careful handcrafting to precision tolerances in their Denver, Colorado factory. Virtually everything is done in-house, and I managed to follow their new “Norad” model through every step from start-to-finish.
Preparing the Components: The initial work is prep and lots of it, rubber dampeners and Carbon Fiber are both cut to spec by hand for later placement in the board. A vertically-laminated aspen core takes a pass through a band saw to get an approximate shape for the final board and is then sanded to factory tolerance for thickness. The hard rock maple laminates, fiberglass, top sheet, and grip tape all take a turn on a die cutter and are punched out to fit into the later wet lay-up. The P-Tex tip and tails are cut out on a vacuum table.
Wet Layup: The actual layup used here is referred to as “sandwich construction”, a very visual analogy for the style of taking a assortment of materials and combining them, one at a time, bonding with a two-part epoxy which is mixed automatically by a very sticky-looking machine, just moments before the boards are laid up. The tools used in this step are a simple spreader and a hammer coated by years of epoxy. The spreader is used to press the epoxy into each layer and affix the pieces of CF and Rubber. The hammer is used to keep the layup in line as it goes together.
Although the factory itself is a bit hectic as far as materials go, special care is taken so that no adulterating materials get into the lay-up. The portions of the materials to be laid up are inspected and kept clean so the lay-up will come out perfect even before it has begun. Even the graphics are protected through the entire process with a protective coat.
The initial stage for the wet lay-up is done from the bottom up, with the graphic layer laid down first. Fiberglass is laid out with carbon fiber strips added to improve torsional resistance to the deck. A maple laminate is added with rubber dampeners inset at the mounting bolt area to absorb road vibrations later. The next to be laid up is the Aspen Core with the P-Tex tip and tail already attached. More rubber strips are added and then another laminate of the maple, followed by ‘glass. Then the entire laid up shape is laid on the graphic sheet and placed into a cartridge to await the pressing.
Hot Press. The skateboard sandwich now goes into a mold and heated press. When the entire, fully-cooked, rough board comes out, it head to a cooling area and allowed to cure for a full 24 hours.
After the board is cooled and cured, it’s inspected in the first step of quality control. Special care is taken to ensure no warping has occurred and the laid up board has stayed in proper form and alignment. When it is found to be of sound quality, the board goes into the finishing stages.
Finishing. The initial step of finishing is to remove all of the excess epoxy which has been pressed out of the board and then hardened, leaving a nasty, sharp mess. This is carefully broken off by hand before a template is affixed to the board for a pass on a router table. This cleans the board and squares off the edges.
Then, the board moves on to a craftsman with a hand-held router to give the edge what will be its final bevel. At this point, the only remaining task is for the board to be sanded so the edge is cleaned to smooth, delicious, perfection. As with the previous steps this as well is done by hand. The final treatment is a light polyurethane spray, to provide an overall sealing of the deck from the elements and to give the deck rails a light shine.
Building out a Norad: The die cut grip is now applied and the final steps of build up take place. Paris 150mm trucks and Never Summer 64mm 81a wheels, assembled with Abec 5 bearings are mounted onto the deck. The final step the removal of the protective coating that has kept the sublimated graphic free of nicks and scratches. From this point forward, this Never Summer is ready to ride.
There you have it! This is the start of a Never Summer board’s life. A complete Norad ready to be shipped out, sold and skated. The stoke doesn’t stop here, it starts here. These things were made to be ridden.
Much respect goes out to Never Summer who were kind enough to open their doors to us. You can check out their entire lineup of locally made high performance snowboards and longboards at their website http://www.neversummer.com/. For a collection of photos that fell to the cutting room floor check out the Never Summer Factory Tour Gallery. |
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 26 July 2007 )
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