I have been using a recreational sliding toboggan for winter camping. It was stapled together for the most part and wasn't made for the rigors of winter travel and has slowly been falling apart. At this point I don't trust it for a long rigorous trip. A friend of mine had an extra plastic blank (looks like the same black plastic as the Black River sleds but thicker, believe it is HDPE) he was trying to get rid of, so I took it off his hands. I made a decent sized toboggan out of it and was happy how it turned out. A problem appeared when I took both the wooden and plastic toboggans to the sliding hill behind our house: the wooden toboggan (pine tar with XC ski glide wax on the bottom) was MUCH faster. The plastic toboggan felt like it had sandpaper on its bottom, I had to use my hands to keep the toboggan moving. This is the opposite I have heard about plastic toboggans-that they are significantly faster than wooden toboggans across all snow conditions. I have tried it now in fresh wet snow and colder icy snow with the same results. Has anyone else experienced this? Is it effective to wax the bottom of plastic toboggans?

Use silicone impregnated plastic-brand name-Super Slide. We made two sleds out of this for our winter trip this year and they worked like a charm! They slide incredibly well and even slid on barely any snow. The Super Slide is designed to line dump truck beds to allow rocks to slide out, so it works with virtually no snow. Pretty amazing stuff! And they are willing to cut it to size. Downside being they don't roll up as well as others and they are a bit heavier, but for speed they work well.

Thanks for the input. What thickness did you get? Is the finish of the plastic smooth or bumpy like a bedliner?

Are the sleds that you you are testing the same length and width and weight?

quote catfish72: "Are the sleds that you you are testing the same length and width and weight? "

The sleds are the same width, but the plastic toboggan is about a foot and a half longer and quite a bit heavier.

This morning I ironed and scraped some glide wax on the plastic toboggan and now it's blazing fast, even more than the wood one. I am not sure how long the plastic will bind the wax though. I will post once I get a better idea.

We used 1/4 inch blue stripe Super Slide from Horn Plastic in Fargo, ND. It is smooth. It is nothing like a bed liner for a pickup. It is a very hard plastic that comes in any length and width you want. They cut it down to 18 inches by 13 feet long. We just screwed on some stringers for support and then ran ropes through the stringers. We rigged it just like a black river sled. Whatever you do, make sure you have an arrest rope on the back stringer.