Nowadays it is possible to purchase almost everything for winter sports, but the boy who is handy with tools and of an inventive turn of mind will take more pleasure in constructing his own things than in buying them out of a shop.
Very few boys would care to make their own skates, as the modern steel-clamp skates are superior in lightness and durability to anything he could construct; but the various varieties of sleds, coasters, and snow-shoes are quite within the measure of his abilities, and their making will fill most pleasurably the leisure hours after school and on Saturdays.
All the cold-weather countries have their distinctive and peculiar forms of winter amusements. Tobogganing and snow-shoeing are particularly popular in Canada; skeeing is the national sport of Norway. But it is the American boy who has reduced coasting to an exact science, and the Yankee bob-sleds and “jumper-coasters” are now pre-eminent wherever the snow flies. To take the best wherever we find it is the sportsman’s motto.
Toboggans
There is no more enjoyable winter sport than tobogganing, and in many parts of America, notably Montreal, large and expensively constructed artificial slides are in constant use throughout the winter season.
For ordinary hill-coasting most American boys prefer bob-sleds and coasters, but in the extreme Northern States and throughout Canada the plain toboggan is the favorite coaster.
A boy who is at all clever with tools can make a good toboggan from three or four thin hickory boards, a few cross-battens, and some rails. For the bottom quarter-inch hickory should be employed, as that is strong and will bend easily when steamed.
To make an eight-foot toboggan with a width of twenty inches, obtain the hickory boards and batten them with three pieces of hard-wood two inches wide and three-quarters of an inch thick. Make the fastenings with brass screws or copper rivets having the heads countersunk in the bottom. At the front ends rivet on a wood batten long enough to project two inches beyond the boards at each end.
From a curtain-pole cut six pieces two inches long and bore a quarter-inch hole through each one from end to end. Cut two hickory rails three-quarters of an inch square and plane off the sharp corners; then with copper or iron rods, to act as long rivets, attach the rails to the toboggan so that they are separated from the battens by means of the wooden blocks, as shown in the illustration of the plain toboggan. Fig. 1.
