Sir Lunch-a-lot

Hello. I have a 3 speed bicycle with 26 x 1 3/8 tires, and I have been riding a fair bit as of late. We have had a pretty mild winter so far, but now the snow has finally come, and I am looking to increase the overall traction I have while riding on ice and snow. Now, I have spent way too much time searching the internet and have been unable to find any sort of studded tires that are this size. Furthermore, I have so far been unable to find knobby tires of this size either. Most tutorials/documents explaining how to make studded tires assume that you have knobbies on your tires to hold/support any sort of stud. However, the only tires I seem to be able to find do not have knobbies.

Is it possible to create studded tires out of what are essentially slicks? Is there anything a person has to do to prevent the studs from coming out?

Is it possible to use a different size of tire on these rims? Based on what I have been reading on Sheldon Browns website, it doesn't look promising seeing as how there are not many (if any) tires that have the same/similar bead size. The guy at a bikeshop I went to a week or so ago seemed to think that you could put another tire size on (I don't know what size he was quoting... something with a decimal instead of a fraction).

I have also found a couple of tutorials regarding creating tire chains for the bicycle wheels. Has anybody had experience with this?

The only other thing I can think of is maybe to find an old rim somewhere that I can get a studded tire for and use that up front for winter.

Anyway, I would greatly appreciate any input you guys would have.

Thanks.