Here's one I made earlier...

When winter arrives it's always best to follow that old Scout motto and "Be prepared", whether this is bags of grit, ice scrapers for the car or snow shovels, by the time cold weather arrives it's too late - all the shops will rapidly sell out. Heavy snow has arrived particularly early this year and, whilst I had sorted most things, one thing I hadn't bought was a sledge for the kids. All the shops have sold out - even though what seems to pass for a sledge is actually a cheap bit of plastic. Anyway, ever the enterprising one, I looked online and found this article in the times from a couple of years ago How to build a super sledge.

They reckon on a cost of £15 to build it and the instructions are actually quite straight forward - they are definitely aimed at the IKEA novice rather than the skilled craftsman. However, I was wondering whether it was possible to do this for significantly less. Whenever I do some sort of DIYery I end up with odd bits left over - the odd plank of wood here, a bag of screws there - and I inevitably build up an array of tools. So, could I build this with the junk in my shed?

First of all the materials:

2 x 1.8 metre lengths 144 x 28mm pine. I had some barge-boards left over from doing a repair to the shed a few years ago. They are a little tatty but, handily, they are already weather treated.

2 x approximately 380mm length 50mm x 25mm pine. I have no idea what it was bought for but I do have a suitable length.

1 x 2metre strip of aluminium 20mm x 2mm. Would an old curtain rail suffice?

1 x 1.5 metre strong, brightly coloured rope. ...or an old pair of boot laces?

24 x 5mm x 80mm countersunk screws. Various with slot and philips heads.

48 x 5mm x 25mm countersunk screws. All sorts - well we'll see.

Cutting the wood was actually a doddle. Whoever wrote the article is as much of a botcher as I am and it's all rather nicely in terms of "cut a big piece of wood into equal pieces" rather than precision measuring. They have also used metric measures which make the sums that much easier. The only thing I didn't quite manage to complete was the aluminium rail. I think this is more for protection as it slides along quite nicely on its own. I'll have to see if I can find something more suitable.

I did notice that this chap has given it a go. It looks a bit posher than mine but then I did achieve this for a grand cost of nothing. Now I'll just have to shove one of the kids down a hill on the contraption to try it out. If it goes well I might be tempted to varnish it up.