Inside Our Pro Boards: No Plastic, No Wet Glass
07 OCT 26
BUILD NOTES 01 · PHONON
4 PRO BOARDS. NO PLASTIC ON TOP.
No plastic. No wet glass.
Four boards in our 26/27 line carry the Pro name: the Archetype Pro, B.O.D. Pro, Trooper Pro and Free Ranger Pro. What makes them Pro is the top of the board.
PHONON · FIBRE TO TOPSHEET · TURN THE SOUND ON
How most snowboards are built, and what we take out.
A conventional board is a stack: base, fibreglass, wood core, a second layer of fibreglass, and a plastic topsheet with the graphic printed on it. The top fibreglass is usually wet-laid, meaning dry glass cloth is soaked in resin as the board goes into the press. It works, but it's hard to control exactly how much resin ends up in the glass, and the plastic topsheet is weight that does nothing for the ride.
Fig. 01 · Layer stack, simplified. Sidewalls and edges not shown.
No plastic topsheet, no wet-laid top glass.
The top of every Pro board is a Phonon pre-tensioned fibreglass layer. It arrives already cured, with the resin set in it, and the graphic is printed straight onto the fibreglass.
Phonon, close up. The weave is the topsheet.
- Pre-tensionedElastic energy locked in during lamination is released when the board flexes. You feel it springing out of turns and popping off jumps.
- Controlled resinThe glass is saturated and cured before it reaches our press, so there's no excess resin adding weight.
- Less on topRemoving the plastic topsheet takes a layer out of the stack.
- Carbon stringersPre-cured carbon stringers run tip to tail on every Pro board for pop and torsional response.
Continuous lamination, Magog, Quebec.
Phonon comes off a high-temperature, high-pressure continuous press. Fibre, resin, heat and pressure in one unbroken process: every step, from impregnation to curing, happens in one pass.
Fig. 02 · Continuous lamination, simplified.
Load it. It stores it. It gives it back.
Because the glass is laminated under tension, it stores energy as the board bends and releases it as you come out of a turn or pop off a lip.
Fig. 03 · Flex, exaggerated for clarity.
Why we chased this build.
Max spent his summers at the Option Snowboards factory as a pro rider. 'Legacy' is the story of how that led to a fibreglass top layer in place of a plastic topsheet.
LEGACY · MAX JENKE · 2023 · 8:35
“The Phonon topsheet on the Pro is energetic and kinda holds it together considering its light weight.”
Snowboarding Forum · December 2025
Angry Snowboarder covered the construction in 2023 and called it proprietary to Endeavor: Phonon Topsheet: Explained.
Phonon on top. Carbon stringers tip to tail.
Part 3 of 3, the weave, is on Instagram this Friday. Follow along at @endeavorsnow.
Always Endeavor
