MYOG Grödel – homemade mini crampons
A few days ago I stumbled over a post at outdoorseiten.net with an idea for self-made Gödel (small, lightweight crampons) using replaceable bolts.
Building the Gödel was easy and overall took not much more than an hour. First I used a piece of cardboard to build a prototype in a size to snuggly fit my boots. Then I cut two pieces of aluminium to the same size and bent them in the vise into the final U-shape. To get the slit for the straps, I drilled a few holes next to each other and cut through with a Dremel. Five more holes each for the bolts and I was done.
The bolts are perhaps a little long, but were the only ones I had available where I found 10 identical ones. They are M5 16mm, but if this works I will probably replace them with 12mm ones. I’m thinking about sharpening the tips to improve traction, but I’m not sure if this is really necessary.
The material cost roughly 15€ (~9€ for the straps and 6€ for the aluminium) with plenty of aluminium still left for future projects.
The two Grödel weight in at 271g an I think I could get this down by using plastic buckles instead of the metal ones on the strips and drilling a few holes to get rid of some material.
This weekend I will test them on tour and will report here about the performance in real life.
More pictures can be found in this Picasa album.
Update 2011-03-11:
I decided to cut off parts of the screws to reduce the forces on the body of the crampon and cut a tiny ridge through the tip to increase friction.
As an added bonus this reduced the overall weight by 10g to 261g.
Update 2011-03-14:
I can’t report on the performance on ice, because it was a nice, warm weekend and the snow we encountered was soft and slushy. But I can report, that the crampons fit perfectly and it’s comfortable to walk in them… Will update once I have done a real test.
) the original design. 
