toboggan

The hand hauled toboggan, ever since reading A Snow Walkers Companion I've wanted to make one of these and with Nick over from the U.K. it seemed a good project to do while we were waiting for the snow.

Cutting the planks, ordinarily the planks would be split from the log but I wanted to get the most out of this tree so I used my Alaskan sawmill attatchment to cut the planks.
The planks needed to be 14 inches wide but this tree was the best of a poor bunch and the plank averaged 10-12inches, not quite wide enough but we made do.

Planks were marked out with a chalk string and cut to shape.
The planks were cut approx 3/8inch thick

A steamer box was made and the plank left in for 2 hours.

Our first plank was left at 3/8inch thick at the head and when we tried to bend it broke across the width.

The next plank had the same response so we needed to go back to the drawing board.

The third plank was planed down to 14inch or less at the head and instead of trying to get the bend in one go we learnt a lesson from bow making and tillered it (bending in small degrees until the wood took the curve, where the curve was flat we sanded down until the curve was flowing.

After each sanding we wet the plank down and cinched the restraining cords a little more until the curve was to our liking.

We left the toboggan to dry for a few days, added cross bars, running and hauling lines and waxed the running surface.

We then tested it by pulling the toboggan to our camp site, it tracked quite well in our snowshoe tracks but did have a tendency to side slip and topple when traversing slopes.

On flat ground it runs like a dream, just need the rivers to freeze up and away we go.