Hey People

I live in northern Alberta and it gets icey in the winter. Trying to walk outside on a couple of inches of ice and snow can get slippy, so I decided to make some ice spikes for my boots. The beauty of these is that you an use them on any shoe or boot and they're built to last. You can buy these from Can. Tire and other places but what fun would that be? Plus I had all the materials that I needed lying around..Enjoy

Step 1: Drillin'

First I found these brass door hinges to use for the plates. I drilled out the one center screw hole to fit the 3/8" threaded rod and then drilled 2 more holes and equal distance apart. I used threaded rod and nuts for the spikes. You can use hex head bolts for these which would be faster and better but this is what I had.

Step 2: Cuttin' N Grindin'

The easiest way to do the spikes is to sharpen the threaded rod first (I had 12 pieces about 6" long) with a grinding disk on an angle grinder. A bench grinder would work best. I then put a nut on the spike side then through the hinge hole and measured a 1" long spike. Another nut was tightened on the back and the rod cut flush with the nut. Make sure you have the spikes on the flatter side of the hinges and the hinge pin facing up toward the boot. They're a good length but I might even trim them back to 3/4". Bam! That's almost it, just need a way to fasten them to the boots..

Step 3: Lacin'

For lacing the spikes to my boots I used green paracord cut at about 2' long. 8 pieces were cut, 4 per boot. I looped the cord around each hole and tied them using square knots. It's important to have the center spike lined up with the ball of your foot, that's where it will feel most comfortable. There you have it, ice spikes that you can use on any shoes or boots. They work really good, you could almost run on sheer ice with these. Thanks for checking out my first Instructable!