Couple MacGyvers Homemade Curling Rink & Rocks On Pond Near Kinmount
/Taras Pater and his wife Bonny Anderson had friends up to their property on Wasyl Pond near Kinmount, and were looking for a fun outdoor activity to keep them busy.
Since their visitors didn't have skates, Taras and Bonny suggested constructing a curling rink on their pond, and set to improvising both a rink and curling rocks in the most Canadian of ways.
Photo courtesy Taras Pater
Taras tells PTBOCanada how they built it:
"We shovelled off the snow and the ice looked pretty rough underneath. So we proceeded to cut a hole in the ice and poured buckets of water over the surface to smooth it out. As it was very cold out, the water froze fairly quickly.
The next trick was making curling 'rocks'. I cut some 4" slabs of pine and screwed in some old kitchen cabinet door pulls that I inherited from a reno to make the handles. When we first tried tossing them, they were way too light and did not glide well at all."
Photo courtesy Taras Pater
Photo courtesy Taras Pater
Bonny can up with a tweak that made all the difference and allowed the rocks to switchin' to glide, Taras tells PTBOCanada.
"My wife, Bonny, came up with the brilliant idea of dipping the bottoms of the rocks in the hole we cut. The water froze up quickly and after about a dozen or so dips and freezings of each stone, we had a good inch of ice on the bottoms of each rock."
"Not only did the stones get considerably heavier, but they also got a great amount of glide as well," adds Taras, who doesn't curl himself but whose mother-in-law Maxine is an avid curler in Lindsay. "We considered painting a house as well but opted for a wood stump as a target instead."
Photo courtesy Taras Pater
Here is a close-up of the rocks that Taras MacGyvered from 4" slabs of pine and old kitchen cabinet door pulls...
Photo courtesy Taras Pater
Oh, and one more neat timbit, er, tidbit from Taras about where the rink was constructed:
"I had the privilege of naming the pond, Wasyl, after my deceased father, as almost all of the pond lies on our property and I noticed it was unnamed on Google maps."
Bonny and Taras
