Board looks dope but can you even use it?

Got your portable speaker attached to your snowjacket and ready to hit up the slopes to do some shred-nasty on the slopes this weekend? Before you head, you have to check this out: Signal Snowboards just demoed a plank made entirely of glass.

Gnarly stuff, right? No doubt the question that comes to mind is – how in the world is a piece of glass going to be able to withstand the weight of a person pounding on it mountainside? The answer: very careful manufacturing.

Signal traveled across the world to Italy to build the board. Italians, if you didn’t already know, are well versed in the art of glass making, and Signal found two companies who could lend their special expertise to their project.

First stop: Vetreria Aurora, a company that specializes in glass manufacturing for heavy duty glass applications (doors, wires, railings, etc.) Here, two separate pieces of the board were cut, melted, and custom-formed in a glass oven. Once that was done, the board was drilled for the inserts.

After that, the board was taken to Viraver Technologies to be tempered (same deal as a windshield). The two pieces went through a series of heat exposure and chemical salt baths to make them tough as $hit, and less likely to shatter. Once that was done, the pieces of glass were baked together with a graphic insert in a vacuum sealed bag.

Finally, after that was all done, the dudes were allowed to take the board out to test it out at Abetone ski resort.

During the tests, the Signal folk found the board pretty much uncontrollable: with it being glass and all, it travelled at breakneck speeds going downhill but was slow as molasses going across more level areas. With such sharp edges, the board turned really well, but at the end of the day, it couldn’t withstand ALL of the pounding a typical snowboard takes, showing cracks similar to what you see in a windshield nicked up by stones and whatnot.

Too bad — would’ve been cool to see this work out and expand the thinking to include skis as well.