Sledge design

[The Medway Handyman]

Couldn't get to my job today, on top of a steep hill on an ungritted back road.

Took my granddaughter sledging instead. Amazing to see the variety of things used as sledges; rubble sacks, estate agents signs, road signs, small surfboards, wheelie bin lids, trays,

Built her the sledge from some scrap timber. Runners are 6 x 1 with aluminium strips.

Wasn't as fast as I thought it would be, mind you, despite eating like a horse she doesn't weigh much.

The plastic sledges seem faster. Is the idea to have narrow runners or are you better off having wider ones to ride on top of the snow?

Any Eskimos on the group?

[Mike Clarke]

That depends on if you have the right sort of snow or not. If it's soft and squashy then wide runners are probably best but if it gets frozen hard then narrow ones would be better.

[ARWadsworth]

Same here. So I stayed at home.

?action=view&current=100_0274.jpg

[Huge]

I have a suspicion for some reason that aluminium may not be suitable; does it bind to ice, or similar?

[Bob Martin]

Nothing beats an inflated truck or tractor inner-tube.

[Dave Liquorice]

Agreed, the snow we have is deep dry powder, only very slightly sticky. Even after being underneath a sledge with a 13 stone on top, it'll still break up into powder. Great for skiing but useless for building...

As to sledges we have a plastic barrel cut in half length wise and Weez II plastic ones. The 1/2 barrel is more fun, faster, less stable but easier to steer it needs deep snow though, there was about 12" on our hill yesterday. The Weez II's tend to just go in straight lines but I can imagine on harder shallower snow they would be very good and the 1/2 barrel uncontrollable.

[Jules Richardson]

Agreed. We've got a wide variety of sledding devices here (I'm in northern Minnesota, where it's snow-bound for at least 5 months of the year) and inflatable tubes are by far the fastest and go the farthest. Just take a few puncture-repair patches out with you just in case!

The sleds that look like surfboards aren't too bad either, but they tend to split and tear up underneath quite quickly and become useless.

cheers

Jules

[Bob Minchin]

How about a multigrade design. V section runners should present a narrow strip on harder snow and ice and the wider part should help it from digging into soft snow too much. Might have to play with the angles - say about 120 degrees included to start with. Adjustable would be really posh. No sign of snow here in Southampton Bob

[John Rumm]

Years ago I had one with steel over the wooden runners and thought it was ok. Only when I tried one with plain wood runners did I realise how much faster that went. So metal does not really help unless its sharp and on ice. A teflon strip of some sort might do nicely.

[Lawrence]

Agreed. Aluminium is wrong. Its specific heat capacity is too small. Mild steel is fine but, of course, will need rubbing down before each use.

Lawrence

[The Medway Handyman]

Vee section sounds great! Getting the curve at the front would be interesting....

How about now?

:-)

[PeterC]

Last one we had was the only one locally that would run on an inch of fluffy snow. It was a sheet of varnished ply (can't remember th dimensions as it was about 50 years ago) with thin ply nailed under the front end and held up in a curve with string. A small length of pointy batten in the middle of the back end would have made it easier to steer (like a skeg) but not on such shallow snow. It went rather fast and took some controlling to stop it turning and acting as a shovel.

[Andy Dingley]

Agreed. If you've got a one day flurry of soft snow in a big park (i.e. not all trampled) then a cheap moulded plastic sledge beats grandad's beautifully hand-crafted wooden one with narrow runners.

[Dave]

Not on topic, but how do you find road signs that tell you how to get out of the city? Daughter lives just down the coast in Portsmouth and we paid a visit there some years ago and I couldn't find my way out. It reminded me about visiting Glasgow many years ago, I had the same problem there, so I picked a road and drove along it until I found some road signs to take me back to New Cumnock.

Dave

[Bob Minchin]

About 120mm this morning. I think the last time we had this much was 1985 Bob

[Ron Lowe]

Old car bonnets go like stink...

[Terry Casey]

Didn't you know where you'd come from ...?

I'm sure I've found plenty of signs when I've been in Portsmouth and A3, A27 and London have a sort of 'gets-you-out-of-town' feel to them ...

Or, for the coastal routes, which seem to suit you better, the dockyard and ferries are well signed. When you get to water, turn left or right as appropriate ...

Dunno about that - it's foreign, innit?

Now let me see ...

Ah yes! If I reach over the back there's this Road Atlas of Great Britain thingy, should give a few hints ...

Surely, in any large town, driving as far as posible in a straight line should get you somewhere - even if it's The Solent - that gives you a point of reference.

It's also useful if you know where North is but I admit that isn't always easy!

You must have had some way of finding your destination in Portsmouth and Glasgow, so why not do the same thing backwards? Or, in Portsmouth, ask your daughter ...?

[Nightjar]

I think he means he visited Southampton. Portsmouth has signs that say Out of City. For Southampton, I usually need the sat nav if I'm not simply back tracking the way I came in.

Colin Bignell

[Nightjar]

It is quite a sticky metal, I would guess because it is covered in aluminium oxide.

I suspect that the best design for the powdery snow I've seen today is a flat surface, to spread the load, a slightly curved front edge, to ride over the snow, and small ribs underneath, just deep enough to provide come directional stability. Much like the moulded plastic ones, in fact.

A sled with runners probably need packed snow or ice to run on.

Colin Bignell

[John Stumbles]

Road signs are the DBs for speed. Though not manoeverability (sp?)

at the bottom of the page)