Make Your Own Snow Shovels!
A snow shovel is an essential piece of snow camping gear. Commercially made back country snow shovels can easily cost $40 and more; prohibitive for many Scouts. Luckily, perfectly serviceable snow shovels can be made at little, or even no cost! Here are a few examples from local Troops and Crews.
The simplest home made snow shovels are made from wood. This one is modeled from the sketch in the BSA "Okpik: Cold-Weather Camping" manual.
We're told that all the materials were donated from construction scraps and/or surplus materials making these shovels free! The 1/4" thick plywood blade is 14" wide x 18" long with a slight curve at the 'business end'. The handle is hardwood from a broken sledge hammer handle. There is normally a red cord looped through the end of the handle to help find it in the snow. The handle is secured to the plywood with 2 - 1/4" bolts recessed into the handle. Note the yellow rope secured with knots through 2 holes in the plywood blade. This assists in lifting the blade when full of snow minimizing the stress on the handle. The wood is sealed with a clear (surplus!) wood sealer.
This example is a bit more complicated, but has the advantages of being lighter and smaller than the wood version above. The Troop that made these reports that they are holding up well under 'normal' Scout use!
The shovel handle length is adjustable. The handles are from salvaged pruner poles. The shovel blades are from donated scrap aluminum signs. Total cost is reported to be $7 each for pop rivets and the large clevis pin for the handle.
Here's sketches of the shovel blade layouts if you'd like to bend up a few of your own!
Apparently aluminum signs have varying degrees of 'temper' to stiffen the metal sign. Highly tempered material apparently breaks when you try to make the bends needed for this shovel so you may have to try several sources of material, but heck, for $7 each it's probably worth it!
Let us know what other ideas your unit comes up with so we can share them. Making your own gear is not only Thrifty, but fun , too. (It also seems to make the Scouts more sensitive to caring for their gear!)
This page revised November 26, 2006