Homemade Wood Snow Shoes
Snowshoes date back at least 6,000 years to Asia, and the ancestors of American Indians are thought to have crossed the Bering Strait land bridge using them. Originally made from wood or bone frames and rawhide lacing, snowshoes were required to travel and hunt in the colder more northern climates.
Making your own outdoor gear not only offers a sense of pride and accomplishment but gives insite into the performance possibilites, maintenance requirements and field repair techniques that only using your own homemade gear can bring. For the past 8 years the owner of the Granite Arch Climbing Gym has used showshoe making to teach these lessons to local high school age students. I was lucky enough to sit in on one of these classes. This is a brief account of what I saw.
Bob gives a lacing demo
The snowshoes are made from commercially available kits such as those sold by Country Ways through their snowshoe.com web site. These are all traditional bent wood snowshoes. The style selected for these classes is the Ojibwa, favored for its ease of use and ability to float over deep soft snow. The more common (at least in the West) Green Mountain Bear Paw style snowshoe is actually a bit harder to walk with, though turning with the longer Ojibwa style does take more practice.
For details on making your own bent wood snowshoe frames, take a look at HAT's Homemade Bent Wood Frames web page!
The kits come with assembled frames that are ready for light sanding. The bottoms are left unsanded to add a bit of extra bite in the snow. After sanding the included templates are used to pencil mark the snowshoe frames for the lacing pattern. Tubular nylon lacing is used in two widths; 3/8" & 1/2".
Lightly sanding the preassembled frames makes lacing easier
Lacing up a toe was first. The narrower 3/8" wide tublar lacing is used for the toe. For the medium sized showshoes, a 15' length is plenty (this is all covered in the detailed color coded instructions). The lacing pattern used is common in the U.S. and Canada. It involves knotting and weaving the string onto the snowshoe frame in three directions: horizontal, diagonal from the right, and diagonal from the left. Each crossover must go under or over another string. Eventually, the pattern forms a grid of triangular intersections. This process must be done in three sections of the snowshoe: the toe, the tail and the center.
Transfer the lacing pattern to the frame, then lace 'em up - carefully!
Sitting on the frame, with the color coded instructions on the floor, seems to be the easiest way to lace the shoes.
Completed heel lacing for the first shoe!
The heels were next.
The lacing pattern for the heel & toe are the same. The color coded instructions yield a beautiful classic pattern!
The center section is next!
The master cord location and the lacing pattern is laid out from templates in the color coded instructions.
The wider webbing is used for the center section. The Master Cord, 4 layers of wide webbing, is laced first. The balance of the center section lacing is then laced following a pattern basically the same as the toe and heel sections.
After completing the lacing, the Master Cord is given a protective wrap of cord to prevent damage from the binding and boots. Note the eraser used to remove the penciled layout numbering.
A heat pencil is used to trim off and fuse the lacing ends.
A dip tank is used to apply the polyurathane (Spar) varnish. The wooden tank is about 4" deep and 1" longer & wider than the largest showshoe size. The tank has a corked drain hole in one end fitted with a kitchen strainer screen. About 1" of varnish is poured into the tank to completley soak the underside of the shoes (~1.5 gallons). A brush is used to coat the top. The toe is dipped into the tank with a gloved hand. Note the tarps on the garage floor. Nearly all of the unused varnish is recovered with a squeegee and brush. The tank is wiped down with paint thinner before storing to prevent too much varnish buildup.
After the first shoe is coated, it is placed on spacer sticks to let it drip into the tank while the second shoe is started. After dripping for a few minuted, the first shoe is hung with wire hooks from a temporary wood frame above the varnishing area. The vaarnish is intended to protect both the wood and the lacing from water damage and excessive wear. With normal use, it needs to be touched up every season or so.
After the shoes drip vertically into the tank for a few minutes, they are moved to a drying area to dry 24-48 hours before the next coat. Note the disposable paint trays below each pair of shoes. Most of the first coat soaks into the wood and the lacing, but there is considerably more 'run off' in coats 2 & 3 making the drip trays more important then. Five pairs of shoes took about 1/2 gallon or spar varnish for the first coat. It takes about a gallon to do all 3 coats for 5 pairs of shoes. The garage door was open during this work with floor fans moving fresh air into the work area.
These custom decorated shoes should last a lifetime with a minimum of seasonal maintenance! These bindings were commercially made and are available from several sources. You can also make your own bindings from HAT's plans or from various online plans.
Other References: "Building Snowshoes and Snowshoe Furniture"; Gil Gilpatrick - May 2001, available from online retailers.
Be sure to check out one unit's tecnhiques for bending your own wood snowshoe frames!
This page revised March 16, 2008