Several years had passed since I made my last split, and since I primarily use the splits I make to ride in marginal early season conditions, I found myself looking to make another one. The board of choice for this project would be one I’ve come to love over the past several seasons — my Lib Tech Jamie Lynn 160. As with the other splits I’ve made, I was able to secure an old board from Ryan at Bergs Ski & Snowboard Shop to practice cutting on prior to sinking the saw blade into my own. My board, along with the old Burton Charger, are shown below, marked with ink and ready to cut…
Cutting the board is always one of the most nerve-racking parts of the process. You can get pretty elaborate, but I generally just use a circular saw equipped with a blade that has 60 carbide tipped teeth, along with a straight edge guide. It’s important to make sure you cut is spot on, and this is where the practice board comes in handy. Before cutting, place masking tape along the length of the board where your cut will be to keep the topsheet from splintering. Easy does it…
I generally use a hacksaw to cut the first inch of the tip and tail of the board, which helps when making the full cut. It is essential to do this if your board has full wrap metal edges (mine did not) to keep the metal edges from blowing out. Here’s a pic of the board post cut…
After cutting the board, the next step is to lightly sand each of the halves along the cut. Once that is complete, I used spar urathane to seal the wooden edges to keep moisture out of the core. I’ve used epoxy in the past, but the spar urathane was easier to apply. I’m curious to see how it holds up. Apply masking tape along the top sheet to help collect any residual urathane…
The next step in the process was to drill holes for the Karakoram clips I planned to use to keep the board halves together. I used sticker templates from Voile (I purchased the Voile Mounting sticker template pack) to hold the board together, and then drilled the holes. The first step is to check placement of the hooks over the stickers, then center punch the holes, and then drill through the board with a 3/16″ drill bit. The final step is to drill the base of the board using a 3/8″ countersink drill bit to a depth just deep enough that the screws for the split hooks sit flush with the base. The board post drilling is shown below…
With the split hooks installed and the board looking like a snowboard again, it was time for the next step in the process, which involved drilling for the touring brackets and heel lifters. For this part of the project, I had a bit of help from my son as shown in the photo below…
Drilling for the heel lifters, bindings, and touring brackets is pretty easy, but does take patience. I used t-nuts for mounting. The first step is to drill a pilot hole (after applying the voile sticker template) at each location using a 1/8″ drill bit. Next, each hole is drilled with a 19/64″ drill bit completely through the board. The final step is to drill the base with a 3/4″ paddle bit, but not all the way through, only enough for the t-nuts to sit just under the p-tex. I usually drill to the wood, then take just the slightest amount of wood out with the paddle bit. Here’s a shot of the board with all the holes drilled….
With the holes complete, it’s time to install the t-nuts. I used a hammer and large flat head screw driver. Pounding the t-nuts in with the hammer gets them flush with the board, then pounding on the flat head with the tip placed over the t-nuts allows them to sink below the base so you can fill the hole with p-tex or epoxy. I chose to use epoxy. The first step was to rough up the t-nut by sanding it a bit so the epoxy will adhere to it better, then apply carefully with a syringe tube….
I used a black pigment from Tognar Toolworks to color the epoxy, and the epoxy I used on this split and a few others is the G/Flex 655 from West System, which works great on splits. After the epoxy dried overnight, I used a razor blade to scrape/cut the surface flush with the base, and the base was ready to go. All that was left to do was install the tip clips, and mount the hardware, and she was ready to go. Here’s a shot of the board in ride mode….
And in tour mode….note I upgraded the straps and highbacks on my Spark R&D binders to include the Surge Rip ‘N’ Flip highback and pillow line straps…
With the board complete and ready to go, I was itching to take it out for a maiden voyage. The trouble was, this winter has been pretty non-existent. Nevertheless, I got it out on snow at Willamette Pass, and it performed flawlessly. Needless to say, I’m pretty stoked on how it turned out….
