How To Tune or De-tune Your Snowboard

Edges can be your friend.   Learning how to maintain them, and saving yourself from endless scorpions or unexpected washouts, will keep you riding longer, harder and having a whole bunch more fun.

Tools:
Diamond Stone
Edge Tuner or File
Gummy Stone
Arm Strength

Edge Tune:
Tuning your edges consists of a couple different procedures. 

First, it is best to begin with some sort of edge stone (we use a diamond stone here and you can probably get them at any local hardware store).  Run the diamond stone along the rough spots on your board edge.  This is called deburring, and will smoothen out kinks and other minor imperfection from all the frontside boardslides you've been stompin' in the rail yard. 

Once your edges are nice and smooth, grab yourself an edge tool (file) and get your hand and arm muscles warm, cause now it's time for a little manual labor.  (If you don't have an edge tool yet, check out the ones on our site.  They are small and made perfect for measuring tune angles: http://exitrealworld.com/Shop/Snowboarding/Tune-Wax).

On your base edge (the bottom of the board) you are going to create a beveled angle along the edge.  Most base edges are angled at 1 degree and side edges between 1-2 degress, so it's usually best to set your edge tool to 1 to 1.5 degrees.  Start with the file perpedicular at the nose of the board and in one smooth motion, move it towards the center. Follow that same procedure from the tail of your board to the middle, making sure to keep your motion fluid and smooth. 

Follow the same step for your side edge, creating a sharp 90 degree angle between the base and side edge.  Allow a little dullness at the contact points on your nose and tail, to avoid faceplants, whiplash and other unfun features of "catching an edge".

And finally, throw some whip-cream on that Edge Tune Sundae.  Grab yourself a gummy stone, stretch out your arms, and shine up those edges so they blind even people on the chair-lift when you're throwing down the corked 1080s. 


Edge Detune:

For all you Jeremy Jones and MFM wanna-be's and will-be's  here's a quick and easy way to detune your edges and get yourself on top of metal and off the concrete. 

For a detune, you're going to prep your board the same way as an edge tune.  Start with a diamond stone, or any other deburring stone, and make sure to get all the imperfections out of your edges. 

Then grab yourself a file, and get to rounding out those edges.  Start with the contact points (again, these are the two points at the widest part of your board, the nose and the tail.)  Place the file at a 45 degree angle and make a firm smooth pass over the area you wish to detune.  Do this only one or two times, as you still need to make it down the hill before you hit the rail. 

Then grab the gummy stone again and polish those edges up.  Make em sparkle, and go stack some urban footy with your new detuned edges!