Hand Made Snowshoes

[DeepWoods]

My friend and I have decided to try our hand at building our own snowshoes out of black ash.  He has a book that is very detailed on how to go about it, but I would like to here from others that have already done it before.  What would you tell someone that has never tried it?  We thought we would start out by hand splitting the ash so we ended up with quarter sawn material.  But I also have a saw mill that would produce the quarter sawn pieces a lot quicker.  Which would be better, or will it make no difference? I'm sure to have many more questions, but we need to start somewhere.

[T Welsh]

DeepWoods, riving the wood will produce better results when you are going to steam bend wood, any defect or flaw will give poor results,straightness of the grain is very important and when you rive a piece of wood it will follow its own grain,when you saw it you can never get it perfect. get out the boiling pot and put it on the woodstove and rig a piece of stove pipe to the pot,makes a great steamer,stuff your stock into the pipe and stuff a rag on the open end and you got yourself a cheap steamer,take some pictures!!! Tim

[SwampDonkey]

Marcel (Isawlogs) has a thread on making snow shoes.

I have one on steaming and making a steam chest.

https://forestryforum.com/board/index.php/topic,41227.msg595301.html#msg595301

Don't use stovepipe it corrodes, use galvanized heat duct or PVC and insulate that with something like spray on foam. Get a metal grease pale and clean out the grease (burn it out). On the metal lid of the pale cut a hole and thread it for a spigot to which you attach some water pipe. Then direct the water pipe into a round plywood cutout on one end, put a cutout on the opposite end with a flat bottom edge for water to drain. Boil water in that grease pale with the lid on. When you see steam coming out the end of the duct, steam an hour per in of thickness. When that galv. pipe is hot enough, you can't touch it longer than a sec or two. Don't try to boil a large volume of water, it won't get hot enough on a stove. In a 20 gallon grease pale, just boil 2 or 3 gallons. A pale half that size would be better I think, even 5 gallon one. Need a lid to direct the steam. Make sure there is no sag in the pipe to trap condensed water.

For shoes, don't use sawn material. Rive it like Tim said. Ash is usually quite straight grained, just weed out the knotty and defect. Most shoes are made from white ash to my knowledge. Black ash is pounded for basket weaving.

[Den Socling]

I work with a few companies that cut White Ash baseball bats. The sawyers follow the grain exactly. The slabs that go into the wood waste boilers could make enough snowshoes to shoe China.  :(

[isawlogs]

 If you can get white ash do so, black is a little britle for shoes, rive it. If you are to cut it on the mill cut it thick enough to have the same grain line all the way through the peice once you start to carve it out if the grain runs out, it will break there.
  What is your plan to string it, nylon or rawhide  ???

  Pics are always fun to look at. What is the title and author of the book, I have one here on the making of shoes but of course it will be French :P   

[DeepWoods]

Thanks for the suggestions so far.  We got off to a slow start on our snowshoe project.  I need to build a door for our bathroom first.  Seems I have to many irons in the fire.  I have some 5 inch spiral dust collection pipe that we are going to try for steaming the ash.  We have started to rive some experimental pieces from the ash we cut a week ago or so.  Lots of work.  I will have to get some pictures started on our progress.   

Marcel, the name of the book is "Building Wooden Snowshoes & Snowshoe Furniture.  Written by Gil Gilpatrick.  The section of furniture looks real intriguing, I think I will be trying some of that in the future.  When I have time of course.   :D :D

[ARKANSAWYER]

  Whats a snow shoe?  I wear my shoes in the snow when ever it does it.  The Dutch make wooden shoes.   :D