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Steve Tomasko
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205michigan
by Steve Tomasko
Tom Nelson’s hobby has landed him a place in Wisconsin’s Sesquicentennial Celebration. Tom, who at 78 has seen a little over half of those statehood years, is one of a handful of people in the country still building snowshoes by hand.
A pair of Tom’s snowshoes is now on display in Washington, D.C., and will travel around the state as part of a “folk art” exhibit.
Although he calls it “just a hobby,” making, repairing and using snowshoes has been a lifelong passion for Tom. He built his first pair at age 13 or 14, a small model pair built of wood he whittled with old leather shoelaces for webbing.
Tom, a no-nonsense, straight-talking, quick-witted and friendly man, takes a lot of pride and care in the work he does. Although he admits to not getting around as quickly as he used to, his mind runs as sharp as the blade he uses to cut rawhide for his shoe webbing. His eyes still carry a bright twinkle when telling a joke or a story.
Tom picked up the moniker, “Old Spyglass,” as a member of the American Mountain Men Association, a recreational group that replicates some activities of early 19th century Rocky Mountain trappers. The words “Spyglass, Ashland, Wisconsin” adorn the crosspieces of the snowshoes he makes.
In the basement of Tom’s house, strips of rawhide hang from the rafters. Snowshoes hang in various stages of completion and pictures of a younger Tom and his brother, both on snowshoes, sit on the workbench.
Tom doesn’t think much of the new high-tech aluminum frame and neoprene snowshoes.
“The old patterns and old materials hold up better than anything else,” Tom says.
He ought to know. Tom shows off a pair of snowshoes he used for almost 40 years and put “many, many, many miles on.” Even though he doesn’t use them anymore, they still hang in his basement as “old friends” with a sign attached - R.I.P. 1938-1975.
Tom was born in 1919 in Hancock, Michigan. In 1926 his family moved to Munising, Michigan, where he “did most of my growing up and getting into trouble.”
It was in Munising where the “seed was planted,” he says. Tom went to school with some kids named Iverson whose dad made snowshoes in his spare time. That enterprise grew into the Iverson Snowshoe Co., no longer run by Iversons, but Tom still has a tie with them. Watching his friend’s dad make snowshoes inspired him to make his first miniature pair.
Tom’s family next moved to Glidden, Wisconsin, where he went to work for the power company on line crews surveying power lines, often on snowshoes.
“We lived on the doggone things for months,” Tom says.
After a five-year stint in the army during World War II, Tom came back to Wisconsin, got married and eventually settled in Ashland where he’s been since 1951. He started his own surveying and engineering company now run by his son.
Tom began repairing and making snowshoes off-and-on in the 1950s. He didn’t get really serious about it until he retired in 1982.
Straight grained northern white ash is the wood of choice for snowshoes. Other woods are too brittle, Tom says. And ash is traditional, too. He used to bend his own frames, a process of fitting the wood into molds and steaming it to shape it. He found it cheaper and more efficient to order his frames from Iverson Snowshoes of Shingleton, Michigan, the company started by his old mentor.
He orders whole cowhides and cuts them into strips for webbing. It takes him an entire day to cut up a hide. Black Angus is the best, Tom says, because of its uniform thickness. Strips of rawhide hang in bundles from the rafters, waiting to be woven to the ash snowshoe frames.
He learned the pattern of weaving the rawhide from an old pair of Tubbs snowshoes. Tom says it looks more complicated than it is. To get the webbing tight, he wets the rawhide strips then pulls them as tightly as he can. When they dry, they’re tight.
Tom finishes his shoes with three coats of marine spar varnish. He says it’s resilient and is better than other varnishes or shellacs.
The demand for his shoes varies from year to year, often depending upon the amount of snow. In his best year, Tom says he sold about 65 pairs, but he usually sells only half that many. Tom puts about 16 to 18 hours of work into each pair of shoes.
Tom makes different styles of snowshoes, including Maine, Cree, Yukon and Bearpaw. He says the Cree is “one of the nicest shoes you can get.” While he makes an occasional pair of Bearpaws, he doesn’t really like them.
“They’re useless,” he declares. But he keeps some on hand for people who really want that style.
Tom also crafts smaller styles for kids - the “Mite” and the “Cub.”
The adult-sized shoes go for $165 plus $40 for bindings that Tom also makes by hand. The Mites and Cubs sell for $90 and $125 respectively including hand-made bindings.
Tom says he “would dearly love someone to carry on the tradition” of crafting snowshoes. But he has yet to find a willing apprentice. It would take five or six months, he says, for someone to learn the techniques. Not to mention years to perfect.
For now, though, Tom keeps at his passion with a mixture of pride, humor and humility.
Says Tom, “I’m one of the few left in the upper Midwest who carries this foolishness on.”
[EDITOR’S NOTE: Tom Nelson died several years ago.]