Dugout canoe build

[reklein]

Foa an actual dugout canoe build go to Sitka Alaska People and look at Rich McClears pics of a 20+ foot dugout canoe from a Sitka spruce log. A very interesting project by two native carvers.

 

Edited February 26, 2022 by reklein

[reklein]

https://www.facebook.com/groups/sitkaalaskapeople/ here's a link to the canoe picks. You might have to scroll abit.

[wefalck]

I think it doesn't work, when you don't have a FaceBook account (like me).

[reklein]

Sorry Wefalck, I should have thought of that. I'll see If I can get permission from the OP to post his pics. It really is a remarkable project.

[Harvey Golden]

Thanks for posting this Bill!  Here's a link about the project: https://www.nationalparkstraveler.org/2016/02/traditional-tlingit-dugout-canoe-being-carved-sitka-national-historical-park  The NPS is doing updates just on FB so far, but no doubt on-the-water/completed pics will trickle out elsewhere in time.   

 

BTW, this superb book recently became available, written by two of the most capable scholars on the subject: 

 

 

 

 

[wefalck]

OK, different peoples, but do they relate to the Haida dug-outs in some way?

[Harvey Golden]

2 hours ago, wefalck said:

OK, different peoples, but do they relate to the Haida dug-outs in some way?

 

I can't speak to the relation/differences, but I believe each group (Haida/Tlingit) had several types of canoes each, used for different purposes/environments.  The forms varied, but the general technology behind their creation was probably very similar.  The book above covers all this in great detail as well as presents information on forms long extinct.

[Justin P.]

While in college, I had the honor of interning at the Squaxin Island Museum and Cultural Center here in the PNW, USA at which time a tribal member was returning to his family's tradition of canoe making.   As an oral culture, the museum at the time decided to document the process as there were no other existing documentation of their tribal canoe traditions.   It was a fascinating process that culminated in the canoes use in the local "great canoe journey" which occurs here every year.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribal_Canoe_Journeys

 

I wouldnt know how one might try to model such a thing using a similar process, or even what wood might be suitable.   The process employed for widening the hull after hollowing could be problematic.  I suppose you might just carve out the completed shape rather than try to widen the hull!

[reklein]

In my 30 years of living in Sitka Alaska I witnessed several canoes being made. As a municipal employee I even got to repair a 45 foot red cedar ceremonial canoe. There was always ome difficulty in steaming the canoe to widen it. They always seemed to crack along the chines. Other than that finding a decent log was the hardest part. This last canoe was a  spruce log. and is about 25 feet long. Again I will try to get permission from the OP to post his pics as he photo documented  the project from the beginning. Since I posted the first link they have successfully launched and paddled around a little. I think the canoe was commissioned by the Nat. Park service.

[wefalck]

I gather they used heat to widen the dugout. This was common process among many peoples building dugouts.  Either a fire was lit inside the semi-finished dugout or heated stones were placed into the almost finished one and the side pulled out using clamps and levers.

 

This is not to be confused with using fire to char the wood to make it easier to work on it with stone tools.

[Justin P.]

36 minutes ago, wefalck said:

I gather they used heat to widen the dugout. This was common process among many peoples building dugouts.  Either a fire was lit inside the semi-finished dugout or heated stones were placed into the almost finished one and the side pulled out using clamps and levers.

 

This is not to be confused with using fire to char the wood to make it easier to work on it with stone tools.

At the time I was witness to the process, there was an all night bonfire and ceremony to heat stones that were laid into the dugout.   Due to the cultural importance of the ceremony I was not invited to see this part, but I believe the dugout was filled partially with water prior to placing the stones into the water or was otherwise saturated with water.   Then a series of battens were pounded into place to widen it as it steamed.   During this build, if I remember no clamps or other modern tools were employed.  Only traditional tools and processes. 

Edited March 3, 2022 by Justin P.

[wefalck]

In Polynesia/Melanesia they seem to use clamps that function similar to the ones used by our boatbuilders. The sides are then pulled apart using twisted together coir ropes of which one part is attached to the clamps and the other to a piece of wood driven into the ground some distance away.

[reklein]

In this case Tommy and Tim used water in the canoe heated with rocks heated by fire to steam the canoe. The rocks they use is a type of scoria from a nearby extinct volcano. They do not split or crack from the alternate heat and water. I'm working on getting a tranche of pics from the gut who unoffically documented this just as a personal interest.

[reklein]

[wefalck]

Are you sure they used scoria? The heat capacity would be very low due to their porous nature. Something like basalt would be much better and would not crack easily either.

[reklein]

Well, Obviously I'm not an expert but the rocks are heavy but full of holes. Sitka is in a volcanic area with one volcano within 13 miles but extinct and its neighbor with a blown out top. There is not much Basalt around there as the underlying rock is sort of  granitic known locally as greywhack. Under neath the organic over burden is usually a material we called red ash. which is crumbly and once disturbed isn't much good for anything constructive. Anyway here are a few more pics. With permission from the OP 

[reklein]

More canoe carving pics

[reklein]

More pics

[AON]

Thank you for posting these.  Very interesting.  I never knew they were soaked, heated and widened.

[reklein]

this shows smoothing with an adze. The adz cuts tend to seal the wood better than sanding or grinding. Tim is attaching an adze head to a new handle of crabapple wood.

[wefalck]

Never used an adze myself, but that's what most full-scale boatbuilders used all over the world for hundreds, if not thousands of years. I gather the Alaskan people would have used stone adzes before coming into contact with the Europeans? On the Pacific islands they used mussel shells instead.

[Roger Pellett]

Adzes and broadaxes always looked to me like a good way to remove your foot!  

 

Roger

[wefalck]

Makes me nervous, when I see something like this:

 

 

 

A boatbuilder on Zanzibar shaping the stem-knee for dhow, photographed in 2012.

[Harvey Golden]

I think any culture that made boards from trees or did any hollowing of wood probably used adzes-- at least till they were replaced by planes and metal gouges/hollowing drawknives.  With regards to Alaska, Iron (of terrestrial origin) had been traded across the Bering Straits as far back as 2,000 years ago.  Any metal-fastened parts of shipwrecks that drifted ashore would've been put to good use as tools/weapons.  The oceans sort of provided a pre-contact globalization of certain materials.  

[Harvey Golden]

I've used an adze a bit, and while I never came close to whacking myself with it, when one sets it down, the edge and a corner are upright, so naturally . . . I've stepped on one, with bare-feet, alas(!)  Quite the trail of blood . . . 

[Harvey Golden]

Here's a "D" Adze-- a small hand adze commonly used historically on the Pacific Northwest Coast.  I've no idea how widespread this form is, but it's superb for close controlled detail work.  This example is a late 20th C. example with a large steel file blade; handle is probably Alder or W. Maple.  The historic image shows on on the PNW coast used to dress a canoe hull. 

[reklein]

Harvey Golden,excellent points. The Tlingits ,Haida ,and Tsimshian folks all had metal pre contact. I wonder what they thoght when shipwrecks and parts of shipwrecks drifted onto their beaches. Makes me think of B.C. comics.

[wefalck]

Yep, cultures always scavanged foreign materials and traded them. It is difficult to know what an 'original' culture was and what materials and tools the culture used. The Inuit, for instance, have traded in sawn planks and metal tools from European whalers and settlers for centuries.