The Scientific American Boy | Page 8

too much snow when used.
[Illustration: Fig. 22. Chair Seat Snow Shoe.]

Barrel Stave Snow Shoe.
Another pair of shoes was made from barrel staves. At first one stave
was made to serve for a shoe, but we found that two staves fastened
together with a pair of wooden cleats were much better. Jack was the
proud inventor of these shoes and insisted that they were far more
satisfactory than the elaborate ones which were later devised.
[Illustration: Fig. 23. Barrel Stave Snow Shoe.]

Barrel Hoop Snow Shoe.
[Illustration: Fig. 24. Barrel Hoop Snow Shoe.]
Now that Jack had shown his ingenuity, Fred thought it was his turn to
do something, and after mysteriously disappearing for the space of an
hour we saw him suddenly come waddling back to the shed on a pair of
barrel hoops covered with heavy canvas. He had stretched the canvas
so tightly across the hoops that they were bent to an oval shape. It was
claimed for these shoes, and with good reason, that they were not so
slippery as the barrel stave shoe, for they permitted the foot to sink
slightly into the snow.

After dinner, Dutchy came back with a book of his father's, a sort of an
encyclopedia in which several different kinds of snow shoes were
illustrated. Reddy, whose father owned a sawmill, volunteered to
provide us with strips of hickory from which to make the frames.

The Sioux Snow Shoe.
[Illustration: Fig.25. Sioux Shoe.]
[Illustration: Fig. 26. Frame of the Sioux Shoe.]
The Sioux snow shoe was the first type we tackled. Two strips of
hickory 4 feet long and 3/4 inch square in section, were bent over a pair
of spreaders and securely fastened together at each end. The spreaders
were about 12 inches long and located about 15 inches apart. They
were notched at the ends, as shown in Fig. 26, to receive the side strips,
which were not fastened together until after they had been nailed to the
spreaders. We found that the most satisfactory way of fastening
together the ends of the hickory strips was to bolt them together. When
the frame was completed, we began the tedious process of weaving in
the filling or web of the snow shoe. First we cut notches in the edges of
the spreaders, spacing these notches an inch apart. Then we procured
several balls of heavy twine at the corner store. Tying one end of the
cord to the right side stick about three inches below the forward
spreader, we stretched a strand down to the notch at the left end of the
lower spreader. The strand was drawn taut, and after making several
twists around it the cord was tied to the left side stick three inches
above the spreader. From this point the cord was stretched to the notch
at the right end of the upper spreader, twisted several times and brought
back to the starting point. The cord was now wrapped around the side
stick for a space of about an inch, and then carried down to the second
notch on the lower spreader, whence it was woven through the other
two strands and tied about the left side stick about four inches from the
spreader. Thus the weaving continued, passing the cord alternately over
and under any cross strands encountered. In order to make the left side
correspond with the right, a separate cord was wound around it, filling

up the space between the strands of the web. The filling above and
below the spreaders could not be so methodically done, but we
managed to weave the strands quite neatly with about the same mesh as
used at the center. To facilitate the weaving we improvised a rough
needle of a piece of wire. The latter was bent double to receive the cord
which was wedged in between the two arms of the needle.
[Illustration: Fig 27. Web of the Sioux Shoe.]
[Illustration: Fig. 28. Weaving Needle.]

The Iroquois Shoe.
[Illustration: Fig. 29. Bending the Hickory Strips.]
But the best snow shoe we made was the Iroquois shoe. The frame of
this shoe was made of hickory strips of the same width and thickness as
used in the Sioux shoe, but 8 feet long. The strips were bent in a loop
and the ends were bolted together. How to bend the wood without
breaking it seemed a very difficult problem. Wood, we knew, could be
easily bent without breaking if boiled or steamed for a while; but we
had nothing large enough in which to boil a strip of wood 8 feet long.
Bill hit upon the plan of wrapping the stick with burlap and then
pouring boiling water on it until it became sufficiently soft to bend
easily. An old oats-sack