Has anyone made snowshoes?

[Peter Galbert]

I'm facing a terrible problem. I have 28 buckets collecting sap for maple syrup in my woods and about 18 inches of snow to trudge through. I started looking for plans for snowshoes, no way will I buy them, I bend wood for a living! Lemme know if you've made them or have any good rescources. thanx

[Doug Shepard]

You might also search for tennis racquet making. The old style wooden ones wood have to use almost identical construction methods I would think.

[Kevin LaPean]

One of the best known guides to snowshoe construction is Gil Gilpatrick's book "Building Snowshoes and Snowshoe Furniture." This book covers the basics of building snowshoes, including frame construction and lacing.

For those that would like to make more traditionally styled Native American snowshoes, Henri Vaillancourt's "Making the Attikamek Snowshoe" is an invaluable reference. This book discusses the design of the snowshoes used by one Native American tribe in Quebec and details each step of their construction, from harvesting the tree and shaping the frames with a crooked knife, to making rawhide strips from animal hides, and finally weaving the rawhide. The lacing patterns on some of the snowshoes pictured are incredibly intricate and make me wonder if I would ever be able to weave such a fine design in my own pair of snowshoes.

When I built a pair of Ojibwa-style shoes a few years ago, I used a different reference book, which I can't seem to find at the moment. The Ojibwa snowshoes eliminate some of the trickier bending at the tip by using two separate pieces for the sides and joining both ends at a point. Either the classic Maine or bearpaw designs might be better suited to collecting pails of sap, as they are shorter, wider designs that are more maneuverable than the longer Ojibwa.

[Peter Galbert]

I'll get my wife, the librarian, to find me copies. Thanx

[Andy Hutyera]

I'll get my wife, the librarian, to find me copies. Thanx
You may find that Henri's book is only available through his trust. I tried to find a copy in Ohio's on line interlibrary loan and had no luck. If you google Henri Vaillancourt it will lead you to a link to his site. The book as I recall is pretty expensive. I went down this road recently and wound up getting a pair of traditional snow shoes made by the Huron Indians in Quebec. They are sold by Cabellas. I wasn't intimidated by the steam bending of the ash so much as obtaining and working with the full grain raw hide. The workmanship on the Cabellas shoes was pretty good. The grain was straight where it ought to be and the weaving was done with full grain leather. They cheat a little by using very heavy monofiliment on the perimeter to weave the raw hide into. The price of Cabellas snow shoes is about twice the price of Henri's book. Another book that has a really helpful discusion of snow shoes is The Snow Walker's Companion by Garrett and Alexandra Conover.

[Bill Houghton]

Fine Woodworking's index lists an article by Henri Vaillancourt in Issue #49 on this subject. If you've got, or got a friend with, back issues, you might find it there. I've got this, somewhere up in the attic, if you get nowhere otherwise.

[Andy Hutyera]

In my research on snowshoes I dug out the Vallincourt article in FWW. Unfortunately it doesn't provide enough information to do the job. It only deals with bending the green wood frames and refers you to Henri's book for the rest of the story.

[Jim Myers]

I remember as a kid making them out of Pine branches but for the life of me cannot remember how.

We just took a bunch and weaved them a certain way and strapped them on and off we would go. They worked pretty good but only lasted a day or two.