It won't be a bit of help to you I'm afraid, but waxing nostalgic, I made and used my own studded commuting tires some 34 years ago at age 18, using "pop" (self-clinching) rivets and backing plates. Worked well at a time when studded bike tires didn't exist in the US. Got me up Skinner's Butte each year (large 208m lump of basalt uplift in the center of town, with a steep access road:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skinner_Butte ). Getting down was the problem. When coming home at night, one of my great joys was touching the rear brake on drier spots and seeing the shower of sparks that resulted. A symptom, perhaps, of being 18 at the time.
I have pretty well given up riding in snow/ice when we get it here in the Willamette Valley, precisely 'cos it
is snow/ice, as in a layer cake of each. We sometimes rarely get dry, fluffy snow, but more often it is wet snow. Once down, it either partially melts of gets covered with little hobnails of freezing rain (we call it Ice Nine after the Kurt Vonnegut story:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice-nine ), then more layers of snow. When you cut through the snow with tires...there's more layers of ice and snow beneath, and all of it sticks to tires, packs them up inside the mudguards, and stops the lot from turning. In Central Oregon, there's dry powder snow (skier's delight) and I can plow through 50mm or so of the stuff with no problem.
I do remember taking falls in the bike lanes next to traffic, and one Moment (that's what F-1 pilots call "incidents") where I came really close to sliding under the wheels of a pickup truck. That kind of put me off more of the activity. Luckily, no broken bones or scrapes in Ice Nine or snow, so I count myself lucky rather than "skilled in falling" (there were some curbings/kerbings that could have done a pretty good job on me if I'd been a bit less fortunate).
Stay safe out there, Jawine.
Best,
Dan.
