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I am looking for a pair of traditional wooden snowshoes and see a lot for sale on-line - most of the wooden ones are listed as "vintage" some are very old and are being sold as decorative items. My question - can an older pair of wooden snowshoes still be revived and used reliably? What would be needed in to bring them up to outdoor use vs just hanging above the fireplace in someone's cottage? Or should I just bite the bullet and buy a new pair of traditional snowshoes...
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There’s some good’ns out there just waiting to be used again, as long as the frames aren’t too far gone structurally. I have a pair of Gros Louis that hung on the wall for years that I decided to refurbish for this season. I glued two layers of thin hickory laminations over the toe area, as there was a crack between the original pacing holes on both shoes. It didn’t got through all the way, but was suspect. I boiled the lams in water for a few minutes to get them to mate well with the compound curve of the toes. The glue up was epoxy (WestSystems G-Flex) “clamped” with strips of bike innertube rubber. I did the same thing in one area near the tail, although no boiling/preforming was needed . I reamed out and epoxied dowels in all of the lacing holes, scraped/sanded the frames down to fairly clean wood, laced them with a relacing pack from Greg at Country Ways Snowshoes and dipped them at the recent Winter Camping Symposium. Just gotta do a couple more coats of varnish and they’re ready to rock.Attached Files -
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Well, the pictures are all outta order, but you get the…picture. 😎Comment
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I really like traditional snowshoes, but I have been somewhat drawn to the Altai-Hok skishoe.... Doesn’t seem to be much on them out there though.Comment
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cool! my present shoes are hand carved ones I got from the granddaughter of an old trapper, they're at least 70 years old and still going strong, the 70 year old harnesses not so much..Comment
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