Happy New Year!

Every year our Scout troop participates in a Klondike event where they have to carry all their gear on a dog sled (yes, they are the dogs). For years now they’ve used these old, heavy, rotting sleds that are difficult for the girls to pull and steer. This year our SM decided to do something different and build the sled used by some Canadian troops. This sled has minimal structural wood and everywhere else rope is used.

The build was relatively straight forward using the plans and documents provided. The only changes I made were to drill 1” holes in the bindings instead of doing the more complex notching the plans use.

Assembly went well with the only real challenge being the flooring hitch. Part of me was hoping the hitches were all easy and fast enough that we’d be able to assemble the sled on-site, but the flooring hitch took a solid hour to complete.

Costs

The sled design page was from 2002, so their quoted $30 cost seemed infeasible in 2024 dollars. I got the wood from Home Depot, total cost was $28. The rope we already had but likley would be less than $10. I did go through four cans of spray paint, and frankly it still needs another coat or two, which added $32. Skis we were able to find locally on Facebook Marketplace for free! So total cost for the sled as designed is about $60.

Wheels

One big change that we have to do is to account for the fact that most years we do not have enough snow for the skis to actually work. This means we have to have wheels. In the past they’ve had a wheel on each corner with fixed axles, but as you can imagine that is near impossible to steer. So I decided on a fixed axle on the rear with a rotating caster on the front middle. Part of me wonders if it would be better to have the caster in the rear, but for a first time out we are going to leave it on the front.

I got the wheels and caster from Harbor Freight, a 5/8” steel rod for the axle from Home Depot as well as some 3/4” SCH40 PVC to act as bushings. I cut the rod to XX” long and the bushings to 2-1/4” long. A 1/8” hole was drilled in each end of the axle to host a cotter pin to prevent the wheels from coming off.