Thursday, November 10, 2011

Alternative Bark Canoes from Poland

Blog reader Tomas from Poland sent me a link to his website, www.wooden-boats.eu which documents his boat building hobby. Included on his site are some images of a birch bark replica canoe made with plywood, not unlike the type discussed in these earlier posts. Tomas' canoe however doesn't have any interior sheathing or ribs.








My understanding is that Hans-George Wagner from Germany pioneered this building technique using thin 3-4mm baltic birch ply as a substitute for the bark. The chaps at Northern Sound in the U.K. are also building using this method. I'm seriously considering attempting a build similar to this perhaps next summer. Thanks for your photos Tomas and well done!



4 comments:

Bryan Hansel said...

That's a pretty cool method of building. Do you know of any English-speaking builders doing it this way?

Murat said...

The only folks I can think of are the builders at Northern Sound. They have some nice shots in their gallery page of their completed canoes, but don't have a gallery outlining their building process. As far as I can tell, it is identical to bark canoe building except the plywood needs to be treated with some type of coating. Since birch is so good to do woodburning decoration, my plan is to burn some designs much like authentic winter bark decorations on some canoes. We'll see how it turns out or even if I can get this project off the ground.

Bryan Hansel said...

I urge you to do it, because I want to watch! I'm thinking of doing a skin-on-frame canoe next year, but this looks really cool.

Tomas said...

Hello,
I am Tomas from Polan, builder this canoe.
I can speak a litel bit english and better in french if you want some advices in this subject.
An advance sorry for my english.
This canoe is not relly finished. On the fotos I was testnig watheproof of plywood sheating.
The next spring I will finish inside of the my Abenaki canoe...

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