how to make snowshoes??

[sniper 2]

hiya, im interested in making my own snowshoes from natural materials. does anybody have any tips or instructons on how to do it? im mainly a mountaineer and planning to go to scotland in february so ive got quite a while to make them.

cheers, dan

 

[Chris G]

Dan, Assuming that there's nothing on here already; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_shoes

Chris

 

[tommy the cat]

Try this site
http://www.livingprimitively.com/
Sure he made some on here.
Hope this helps Dave

 

[spamel]

You need to look for Roycroft snowshoes. They are made with a number of long straight wands of wood, lashed at the tip and spread slightly at the rear with two boards lashed across around the balance point, one for the heel and the other for the front of the foot. The ball of the foot sits on the front board, which is just back from the point of balance so that the shoe tips up at the front when walking, thus helping you move around easily.

http://torjusgaaren.blogspot.com/2007/01/roycroft-snowshoes.html

 

[Oblio13]

My daughter and I just finished making a pair of Ojibwa style shoes for her. We got the plans from "The Snowshoe Book", Osgood and Hurley. I cut down a couple straight white ash trees and split out wood for the frames with an ax, then shaped them with a block plane. I made a couple jigs, but they didn't really work well. It's just as easy to assemble the sides and cross pieces on a flat floor, hold them together with C-clamps, and weight them down with boards. The toe can be bent up in a second process. To make the sides easy to bend, we wrapped them in rags and poured boiling water over them for a couple hours. We used copper roofing nails to rivet the toes and tails together, with copper washers fashioned from some leftover roofing. The decks are woven from a total of 200' of nylon webbing. She hasn't used them yet, she's going to dip them in a pan of urethane varnish first. It was fun, but a lot of work.

White ash trees being split into frame stock:

Weaving the deck:

Ready for the varnish: