How to build a Track Setter for Cross Country Skiing.

 

With the arrival of winter, finally, I think it is time to have a posting about what goes on here when there is snow on the ground.

In the fall of 2010, we constructed a couple miles of trails on the property. Our intentions of the trail system are to have the ability to walking and trail run in the spring, summer and fall and to snowshoe and cross country ski in the winter. We originally skied the trails after packing them with my 1972 Ski-Doo Olympique 340 snowmobile. Sarah had mentioned that it would be really nice to have tracks to follow. This got me thinking about how to build a track setter to be towed behind the snowmobile. I researched a few sites with a general search of how to build a track setter and this link was the most helpful. http://www.marcusnyberg.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Tracksetter.pdf

  

  Making the Track Setter

This was constructed in a couple hours using scrap lumber and the odd hardware I had laying around. I found the dimensions for spacing the molds by searching online. I merely substituted lumber for the metal. The molds for the tracks are waxed with old scraped off ski wax that was on our ski waxing bench. This seems to work well. Originally, it was designed for old weights from a weight bench set to be affixed, but I soon realized I needed more weight than I had. The weight also needed to be placed further back on the track setter. A cement block was then added. I ended up adding a 2x6 piece of lumber to either side after first building it. It is pictured how it currently used.

If I were to do things differently, I would have put a piece of flashing under the body of the track setter to reduce the icing. I am thinking of adding some “wings” to to front to pull in snow for track setting in low snow conditions. The biggest problem I have been facing are the skegs. I made these out of some scrap plywood and the front edges keep shattering when hitting buried obstacles. I am trying to find some scrap metal plate to remake them.

I eventually will build the goose neck hitch pictured in the plans, I am still thinking of how to do this without a welder. I have also seen plans on how to hook this to the snowmobile by mounting it to a pivot point attached to the tunnel. My goal is to build the hitch so it can be easily switched between the track setter and the leveler I built (next blog).