Cherry Bittern Paddle
Blade Closeup
Walnut Kingfisher Paddle
Blade Closeup
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Varnished Paddles
With warmer temperatures and glorious sunshine on this spring day, I got a chance to quickly revarnish two of my previous paddles from this past winter - The Walnut Kingfisher Solo and Cherry Bittern. Varnishing has obviously darkened the pyrography considerably (especially the walnut paddle), but I'm still happy with the results.
Cherry Bittern Paddle
Blade Closeup
Walnut Kingfisher Paddle
Blade Closeup
Cherry Bittern Paddle
Blade Closeup
Walnut Kingfisher Paddle
Blade Closeup
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Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Cuban Ingenuity & Artistry
Just got back from a relaxing one-week vacation in fantastic Holguin, Cuba. Beautiful country with beautiful, genuine people. I've always been impressed with the average Cuban's ingenuity to use their limited resources and material goods with expert artistry and skill. This trip, I met a local artisan named Fabio whose medium was pyrography.
The Artist: Fabio Maroldis Salas
Apart from his fantastic work, what really caught my attention was the home-made pyrography device he had rigged up. Apparently, he's an electrical engineer and made the machine with an old Russian television transformer. Carved his own handle, re-used some electrical wiring, made some interchangeable nibs and now has a fantastic pyrography machine. A little cumbersome to change temperatures he told me, as it required him to unscrew the wire connectors and move them left or right to increase or decrease the nib temperature. Most of his work is on local cedar which is either sustainably harvested or re-used from construction scraps.
Homemade Pyrography Machine
Some more of his work:
I ended up with a fantastic Che notebook which I intend to use for scribling some my own paddle design ideas in the future.
The Artist: Fabio Maroldis Salas
Apart from his fantastic work, what really caught my attention was the home-made pyrography device he had rigged up. Apparently, he's an electrical engineer and made the machine with an old Russian television transformer. Carved his own handle, re-used some electrical wiring, made some interchangeable nibs and now has a fantastic pyrography machine. A little cumbersome to change temperatures he told me, as it required him to unscrew the wire connectors and move them left or right to increase or decrease the nib temperature. Most of his work is on local cedar which is either sustainably harvested or re-used from construction scraps.
Homemade Pyrography Machine
Some more of his work:
I ended up with a fantastic Che notebook which I intend to use for scribling some my own paddle design ideas in the future.
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Folding Up the Hull
With the building bed all prepared and the bark cleaned, the next step was to prepare the canoe's hull. I mentioned earlier the the bark panels provided with the kit were of insufficient length to form a 1-piece hull. This meant that the hull would have to be lapped - a technique described in Jim Millers's fantastic DVD.
The dilemma I had was that the two pieces of usable hull bark had large knotholes in perfectly akward places. Which ever way I oriented the panels, there would be a gaping hole right at the delicate bow/stern or right under the centre thwart..not acceptable. To get around this dilemma, I was forced to to cut one of the bark panels into pieces so as to remove the centered knothole and build a three piece hull.
Central Panel; Cutting out knothole; placement of panels below form
The bark was placed white-side-up under the form and starting from the stern, the panels placed on top of each other moving towards the bow, like laying shingles. The pieces are supposed to overlap 2" in a full scale model, so for my ¼-scale model that meant ½" lap. Effectively this means some overlap ridges on the bottom of the canoe, but these will be sewn and sealed with pitched to make a watertight seal. In also means that this canoe model will in fact have a distinct bow & stern, unlike may 1-piece hulls that are symmetrical at either end.
Overlap at bow; Overlap at stern
The bed was moved out to the balcony and boiling water was liberally poured onto the bark & the weighted down frame (weighed down with some heavy block planes). At intervals of 3", gores were cut into the bark ensuring that they were cut perpendicular to the frame edge - that's why they look like they are on an angle. The cutting was done with a utility blade angled towards the stern to get a thinned edge.
Softening the bark with boiling water; Cutting a gore
With the gores cut, the bark was carefully folded up and held into position with the ¼" dowels serving as stakes. To ensure even pressure along the sides, scrap pieces of cedar, serving as battens, were sandwiched between the bark and dowels. Once I finished these outer stakes, I placed square ¼" dowels (not included in the kit, purchased at Canadian Tire) with their bottoms shaved to a point on the inside of the hull. These were placed carefully to fit in the small space between the bark and edge of the plywood frame. Then the inner stave and outer stake were tied with scraps of leather lace to effectively shape the hull.
Folding up the bark; Tying the first inner stave & outer stake combination
After all the inner staves were tied off and done, the outer stakes were tensioned to vertical by tying additional lacing across each pair of dowels. Now the soaking bark needs to dryout for a few days to permanently form the hull shape. Starting to look like a canoe!
Inner staves positioned; Tensioned hull with cross lacing
Items up next include the most difficult part in my opinion...carving the gunwales - the real backbone of the canoe. Scaling them down to quarter scale means that these structures will be quite delicate. We'll see how it goes in another post.
The dilemma I had was that the two pieces of usable hull bark had large knotholes in perfectly akward places. Which ever way I oriented the panels, there would be a gaping hole right at the delicate bow/stern or right under the centre thwart..not acceptable. To get around this dilemma, I was forced to to cut one of the bark panels into pieces so as to remove the centered knothole and build a three piece hull.
Central Panel; Cutting out knothole; placement of panels below form
The bark was placed white-side-up under the form and starting from the stern, the panels placed on top of each other moving towards the bow, like laying shingles. The pieces are supposed to overlap 2" in a full scale model, so for my ¼-scale model that meant ½" lap. Effectively this means some overlap ridges on the bottom of the canoe, but these will be sewn and sealed with pitched to make a watertight seal. In also means that this canoe model will in fact have a distinct bow & stern, unlike may 1-piece hulls that are symmetrical at either end.
Overlap at bow; Overlap at stern
The bed was moved out to the balcony and boiling water was liberally poured onto the bark & the weighted down frame (weighed down with some heavy block planes). At intervals of 3", gores were cut into the bark ensuring that they were cut perpendicular to the frame edge - that's why they look like they are on an angle. The cutting was done with a utility blade angled towards the stern to get a thinned edge.
Softening the bark with boiling water; Cutting a gore
With the gores cut, the bark was carefully folded up and held into position with the ¼" dowels serving as stakes. To ensure even pressure along the sides, scrap pieces of cedar, serving as battens, were sandwiched between the bark and dowels. Once I finished these outer stakes, I placed square ¼" dowels (not included in the kit, purchased at Canadian Tire) with their bottoms shaved to a point on the inside of the hull. These were placed carefully to fit in the small space between the bark and edge of the plywood frame. Then the inner stave and outer stake were tied with scraps of leather lace to effectively shape the hull.
Folding up the bark; Tying the first inner stave & outer stake combination
After all the inner staves were tied off and done, the outer stakes were tensioned to vertical by tying additional lacing across each pair of dowels. Now the soaking bark needs to dryout for a few days to permanently form the hull shape. Starting to look like a canoe!
Inner staves positioned; Tensioned hull with cross lacing
Items up next include the most difficult part in my opinion...carving the gunwales - the real backbone of the canoe. Scaling them down to quarter scale means that these structures will be quite delicate. We'll see how it goes in another post.
Saturday, April 5, 2008
Aleut Kayak Paddle - Part 1
Back to paddlemaking. A few months ago, I wrote a post documenting an attempt to construct a laminated Greenland Style kayak paddle. For this project, I had obtained 1-1/8" strips of walnut & poplar at Century Mill as well as a large, narrow piece of walnut stock (dressed to 4" x 96" x 1-1/8") with the intention of making a solid one-piece if the lamination experiment failed (which it didn't). Soon after I had decided to carve another kayak paddle with this suitable walnut stock and settled on a different style...an Aleut (Alaskan Inuit) style of blade.
A typical aleut paddle shape
Searches on the net revealed that this paddle is unique amongst traditional kayak-faring peoples in that it is a non-symmetrical paddle with only one side of the blade used as the power face. The blades are long (30+") linear extensions from the loom with full lengthwise spines forming a noticable ridge. The backface of the blades are curved similar to modern touring paddles, albeit on a much more shallow gradient.
After checking out some pages, like Lew Plumme's recreation of an Aleut Paddle in the Finland National Musuem as well as Wolgang Brink's paddle making pages, I figured it would be an interested project. Plans were hard to come by, but I did manage to find an online reprint of David Zimmerly's 1984 Sea Kayaker article entitled "Arctic Paddle Design" with a specific page (.pdf format) documenting an Aleut design. I also luckily came across the page of Swedish paddle expert, Bjorn Thomasson, who had some an Aleut plan (.pdf) as well as a few others. Thomasson's well drawn plan with side view, dimensional info, and loom cross-section diagram was the one I followed, although I was limited with the confines of my walnut piece. The linear lines of the blade were too similar to the Greenland Paddle I had already made so improvised and made the blades more similar to stretched beavertail designs. Because of the board's length, cutting out the blank by hand took a frustratingly huge amount of time. I should mention that this was done back in the Fall of '07. After exhausting myself out cutting the blank, I simply stored the paddle in the locker-room until I was ready to tackle this bigger job.
Cutting out blank & the warped paddle after storage
Flash forward a few months and decided it was time to finish this project, only to find out that blank had warped while being stored. The grain (especially in the loom) was slightly curved to one side but I had thought that because it seemed mostly contained, the paddle would still turn out ok. A new off-centre line had to be drawn which made affected the paddle's symmetry. Anyway, the paddle now "sags" a bit when held at the center, but it's not too bad so the paddle is still salvageable in my opinion.
After planing down the blades it was time to begin carving out the ridge. This was done with the trusty hook knife. Again, this walnut piece tended to have a bit of wavy grain (in retrospect I wouldn't have bought it had I paid more careful attention) so the wood tended to tear out unevenly. Despite my best efforts, the spine region is not perfectly straight and I honestly believe it could only be achieved with power tools (like a router) or by expert woodcarving hands (not at that level yet).
Planing down one side & carving out the spine
At this point the ugly, rough worked had to be sanded down and to do an even job along the ridge, I had wrapped a piece of 1-1/4" scrap dowel with 60 grit coarse sandpaper. After just a few passes on the blade... PAIN!!!! Two quarter inch slivers of wood jammed under my fingernail! Instant blood letting of course but at the time, my wife was taking a much deserved nap inside and I didn't want to wake her...so I toughed it out in silence, grabed some tweezers and yanked the slivers out (all the while tearing out some fingernail bed flesh). The bleeding stoped with simple pressure and a day later the swollen nailbed receded leaving behind a mark showing how deep the wood got embedded. Guess my manly pain suppression worked because she didn't notice a thing. Hand sanding was not the way to go, so I scrounged for a solution and came across a sanding disk attachment to a drill in the growing tool pile. This vertical disk allowed for close sanding next to the spine and smoothed out the bumps in no time.
Sanding with dowel, fingernail aftermath, sanding with drill attachment
The other error I had miscalculated is that the stock had been planed down to 1 1/8" thickness (the standard thickness I've been using for canoe paddle shafts). The Aleut loom however is a distictly oval shape (almost egg shaped) and plans clearly cite a thicker dimensions (Zimmerly: 4.1cm = 1 5/8"; Thomasson: 3.1cm = 1 7/32"). To achieve this I would have to laminate another strip onto the loom. Rather than use walnut for this, a contrasting piece of scrap maple was cut and glued.
Laminating maple onto the loom
This 1-1/8" square piece meant that the total loom thickness was now 2-1/4" and of course would need to be planed down. I decided on a thicker loom and used Zimmerly's measurement of 1-5/8". A line was drawn to reflect this desired thickness. The Gorilla Glue foamed quite vigoursly and seeped out the edges, making the lamination job look quit messy. However, I knew that the egg-shaped cross-section of the loom would mean these unsightly glue blobs would be planed off. Quite easy with handtools which is why I enjoy using this glue rather than epoxy.
Drawn thickness line & one side smoothed
At this stage, the loom was left purposely thick and the paddle turned over to shape the backsides of the blades. As mentioned previously, the Aleut paddles had concave powerfaces and convex sided back face. This meant using the spokeshake to camber the backside and result in a curved surface. The pics really don't show this well.
Curved blade views
To be honest, this double blade has been quite tedious to work and the spine ridge has taken a toll on my patience. I've decided to take a bit of a break from finishing this one and will probably come back to it after I've spent more time on my current distraction with the Birchbark canoe model.
UPDATE - November 1, 2008: The paddle is now complete - Read Part 2.
A typical aleut paddle shape
Searches on the net revealed that this paddle is unique amongst traditional kayak-faring peoples in that it is a non-symmetrical paddle with only one side of the blade used as the power face. The blades are long (30+") linear extensions from the loom with full lengthwise spines forming a noticable ridge. The backface of the blades are curved similar to modern touring paddles, albeit on a much more shallow gradient.
After checking out some pages, like Lew Plumme's recreation of an Aleut Paddle in the Finland National Musuem as well as Wolgang Brink's paddle making pages, I figured it would be an interested project. Plans were hard to come by, but I did manage to find an online reprint of David Zimmerly's 1984 Sea Kayaker article entitled "Arctic Paddle Design" with a specific page (.pdf format) documenting an Aleut design. I also luckily came across the page of Swedish paddle expert, Bjorn Thomasson, who had some an Aleut plan (.pdf) as well as a few others. Thomasson's well drawn plan with side view, dimensional info, and loom cross-section diagram was the one I followed, although I was limited with the confines of my walnut piece. The linear lines of the blade were too similar to the Greenland Paddle I had already made so improvised and made the blades more similar to stretched beavertail designs. Because of the board's length, cutting out the blank by hand took a frustratingly huge amount of time. I should mention that this was done back in the Fall of '07. After exhausting myself out cutting the blank, I simply stored the paddle in the locker-room until I was ready to tackle this bigger job.
Cutting out blank & the warped paddle after storage
Flash forward a few months and decided it was time to finish this project, only to find out that blank had warped while being stored. The grain (especially in the loom) was slightly curved to one side but I had thought that because it seemed mostly contained, the paddle would still turn out ok. A new off-centre line had to be drawn which made affected the paddle's symmetry. Anyway, the paddle now "sags" a bit when held at the center, but it's not too bad so the paddle is still salvageable in my opinion.
After planing down the blades it was time to begin carving out the ridge. This was done with the trusty hook knife. Again, this walnut piece tended to have a bit of wavy grain (in retrospect I wouldn't have bought it had I paid more careful attention) so the wood tended to tear out unevenly. Despite my best efforts, the spine region is not perfectly straight and I honestly believe it could only be achieved with power tools (like a router) or by expert woodcarving hands (not at that level yet).
Planing down one side & carving out the spine
At this point the ugly, rough worked had to be sanded down and to do an even job along the ridge, I had wrapped a piece of 1-1/4" scrap dowel with 60 grit coarse sandpaper. After just a few passes on the blade... PAIN!!!! Two quarter inch slivers of wood jammed under my fingernail! Instant blood letting of course but at the time, my wife was taking a much deserved nap inside and I didn't want to wake her...so I toughed it out in silence, grabed some tweezers and yanked the slivers out (all the while tearing out some fingernail bed flesh). The bleeding stoped with simple pressure and a day later the swollen nailbed receded leaving behind a mark showing how deep the wood got embedded. Guess my manly pain suppression worked because she didn't notice a thing. Hand sanding was not the way to go, so I scrounged for a solution and came across a sanding disk attachment to a drill in the growing tool pile. This vertical disk allowed for close sanding next to the spine and smoothed out the bumps in no time.
Sanding with dowel, fingernail aftermath, sanding with drill attachment
The other error I had miscalculated is that the stock had been planed down to 1 1/8" thickness (the standard thickness I've been using for canoe paddle shafts). The Aleut loom however is a distictly oval shape (almost egg shaped) and plans clearly cite a thicker dimensions (Zimmerly: 4.1cm = 1 5/8"; Thomasson: 3.1cm = 1 7/32"). To achieve this I would have to laminate another strip onto the loom. Rather than use walnut for this, a contrasting piece of scrap maple was cut and glued.
Laminating maple onto the loom
This 1-1/8" square piece meant that the total loom thickness was now 2-1/4" and of course would need to be planed down. I decided on a thicker loom and used Zimmerly's measurement of 1-5/8". A line was drawn to reflect this desired thickness. The Gorilla Glue foamed quite vigoursly and seeped out the edges, making the lamination job look quit messy. However, I knew that the egg-shaped cross-section of the loom would mean these unsightly glue blobs would be planed off. Quite easy with handtools which is why I enjoy using this glue rather than epoxy.
Drawn thickness line & one side smoothed
At this stage, the loom was left purposely thick and the paddle turned over to shape the backsides of the blades. As mentioned previously, the Aleut paddles had concave powerfaces and convex sided back face. This meant using the spokeshake to camber the backside and result in a curved surface. The pics really don't show this well.
Curved blade views
To be honest, this double blade has been quite tedious to work and the spine ridge has taken a toll on my patience. I've decided to take a bit of a break from finishing this one and will probably come back to it after I've spent more time on my current distraction with the Birchbark canoe model.
UPDATE - November 1, 2008: The paddle is now complete - Read Part 2.
Friday, April 4, 2008
Choosing a Canoe Design
Before more work could proceed on my model canoe, a decision was needed regarding the ultimate design. For inspiration, I checked out many birchbark canoe sites. An amazing builder is Ferdy Goode out of Arbor Vitae, Wisconsin. Pics on his blog include the beauty on the right which I've since posted as my wallpaper for inspiration. In addition, I've checkout at Chuck Harris' many works on his site, as well as, Judy Kavanagh's build on her fantastic page on everything bark canoe related. She built her own 11 footer on her townhouse patio back in 1999 documented here...a definite inspiration for an urbanite like myself.I've also been intensely reading Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America and the decision has been nerve racking. So many styles and models to choose from!
The first consideration was that I'm a newbie at this, so simple was the key. That ruled out the Maliseet & Mi'kmaq designs which involve tumblehomed sides and more elaborate though cumbersome work on stitching. I've always been attracted to more modest sheerline and canoes with lower stem ends so that meant avoiding Old Algonquin / Fur Trade styles. Ultimately I wanted this experience to be a scale replica of a full scale bark canoe that I would abitiously make as one of my life goals. So I psycho-analyzed my own paddling preferences.
Doing most paddling solo, I wanted a smaller boat. For whatever reason, most modern solo canoes are around 14 feet, but Adney cites many tribes that used shorter hunting canoes within the 12ft range. This appealed to me because a 3 ft model could be built nicely at ¼ scale with easier calculations and measurements.
With these ideas in mind, I settled on a Tetes de Boule (Attikamek) Hunting canoe (figure 104 in Adney's book) that was listed as 11'8" long with a narrow width of 29" and a 12 ½" depth. Sounds like a perfect solo boat for me.
Tetes de Boule (Attikamek Plan)
These canoes, however, tended to have significant rocker which I personally don't want in a boat intended for flatwater (no way I'd take it down a rocky river run anyway). So as a bit of modification, I intend to minimize the high ends and mimic the stems and sheerline found on another style, a St. Francis Abnaki (Figure 82 in Adney) basically the style on Ferdy Goode's canoe pic. Even though the Abnaki model is a 14 footer and too wide for my liking, the stem profile is similar enough to the Attikamek so as not to upset the measurements while seeming more simple to bind.
St. Francis Abnaki Plan
After deciding on these two plans, I've followed the advice of Ted Behne, a well known model canoe builder who's written some tips on the Bark Canoe store site. One of these was making an enlarged ¼ scale copy at a printshop. Basically, Adney's illustrations are set at 1ft per ½". By blowing up the image 600%, I obtained a large poster size scaled at 1ft per 3". Measurements from these enlarged "blueprints" could then be directly and applied to my quarter scale model, without having to do any additional calculations...very handy. Total cost was $8 at Kinko's.
So now the building can commence!
