Canoe Wall Art

With the canoe build finished and the boat launched for its Maiden voyage, it needed a suitable mount for the cottage wall. In keeping with the theme of the canoe, I wanted to use whatever materials were on hand to make this functional piece of wall art. I came up with the idea of using a left over piece of birch plywood as a background and burning the blueprint image from Adney's book that served its purpose as a guide for the building process. After printing the image to appropriate scale and taping the pieces of paper into position onto the board, I transfered the image and burned it with the fine tip pyrography writing nib. I wish I could free hand it, but Adney's sketching detail and adherence to scale is amazing and out of my league.


Transfering the Adney plan


The burned image
For the border, I ended up using some harvested bark from the recent cottage hike (all from naturally downed trees). I figured it would add a nice touch to emphasize the material used for the build. Using a scrap piece of plywood as a guide, I scored across the face of some collected bark with my knife to create even pieces. Along with some regular craft adhesive and a few clamps, the bark pieces were glued to form a rustic border. To support the boat, I simply drilled 2 holes into the plywood and stuck in some 1/4" dowels provided in the kit, re-using these items from earlier in the build.


Cutting bark strips for the border; Dowels into position
Here's how the final piece turned out mounted on the wall. Easy access if I want to take it down and play with it in the lake until the real one is eventually built.


The final resting place


Side View


Below the Greenland Kayak Paddle & next to the Cherry Maliseet