Historical Paddle Painting - William Armstrong

While browsing through The National Art Gallery of Canada's online site, I came across a painting that contained a pictorial representation of a decorated native paddle.


William Armstrong
Hudson's Bay Store, Fort William c. 1860-1870
National Gallery of Canada (no. 30490)
The seated figure on the left (veiled woman?) seems to be holding a thin paddle (narrow algonquin/ottertail style) with a yellow and red checkered design. Unfortunately the grip area is obscured by the placement of her hands.


Paddle Closeup

Rick Nash Bark Canoe

While up north, I came across a beautiful 15 year old bark canoe hanging in the main store of Langford Canoe Company in Dwight. It was built by local craftsman Rick Nash. (Edit: NOVEMBER 5/09 - Recieved an email from Rick mentioning that the canoe was actually built by Ian Cameron of Dorset under Rick's guidance back in 1989)

Rick wrote the chapter on Birchbark canoe building in John Jennings' wonderfully illustrated text, The Canoe: A Living Tradition. I briefly met Rick and his wife Doris at the '08 WHCA Assembly in Peterborough where he had some fantastic models and photos of his work on display.

The fluorescent lighting in the store didn't make for the best photos, but this canoe sure is one heck of a beauty! What really caught my eye was the meticulous running lacing pattern under the outwale side and the pretty, decorative bow lacing. Here are the pics...


Hanging over the side door


Angled shot



Bow closeup



Narrow stitched and sealed gores


Closeup of running lashing

Crooked Knife Making - Part 2: Tempering Blade

When last posted, the rusty file destined to be my crooked knife blade had been softened and ground down by hand over many laborious days. The edge of the manufactured blade had also been shaped with a file to a more shallow cutting angle. After working on the blades, creating the angled edge, and polishing off as many toolmarks as possible (still left a few), it was time to finally temper them.


Filing off the teeth; Blade shaped and polished
This involved heating the file back up to a cherry red colour (in an outdoor firepit), quickly bending the tip to the desired angle with pliers, reheating to cherry red and then dumping it into cooking oil to quickly quench and harden the steel (the manufactured blade was already bent, so it was simply heated and quenched). I planned to do this at dusk so that I could see the colour of the heated file more accurately. Since the steps had to be done rather quickly in near darkness, all the required stuff was layed out in an organized fashion. I used a small metal vice/anvil place the blade flat while bending the tip with pliers; a tall & narrow tea can seemed perfect to hold the 450 ml of Sunflower oil to do the quenching. Taking pics of the each step was not an option while working alone, but I did manage to take one blurry shot of the bent blade right before it was dunked in the oil


Ready to go; Quenched in cooking oil
All went well. I was expecting the oil in the can to burst into flames when the superheated steel was immersed but all that ended up was sizzling and the smell of french fries. Once it cooled down a bit, the metal was quickly tested with a hacksaw (not in the pics) to see if it was still soft but the blade simply bounced off the steel without any bite. The quenching had worked. Next morning, the blades were examined and of course were covered in disgusting residue that would need to be polished off. Here are the before and after shots.


Grime after quenching; Quick polishing
These were going to be working knives so I didn't bother polishing them to a mirror finish, just sufficient enough to be clean. The other reason for polishing at this stage is because some of the temper needs to be drawn out otherwise the blades may snap under pressure. This involved baking in the home oven at 450F for about an hour until a straw colour appears on the blade. Baking without polishing first means lots of unnecessary smoke in the kitchen.

This stage went well and next up will be a post documenting the making of the handles.

Update Oct. 2/09: Part 3 on making the handle has been posted.

Steve Cayard Penobscot Canoe

Via Indigenous Boats Blog, some pics of builder Steve Cayard making another bark canoe masterpiece. Full gallery here.

Walnut Laminated Voyageur

A common paddle design marketed today is the so called "Voyageur" blade, essentially a straight side paddle with a wide, squarish tip, and recurved shoulders at the throat. Despite the persistant occurance of this design in modern stores, there is little evidence that it resembles anything that the real voyageurs may have actually paddled. Certainly in the paintings of Frances Anne Hopkins, the paddles don't resemble this blade design. The only other time I've seen the recurved shoulder design is with an early Mi'kmaq design documented by Adney.

Graham Warren refers to this design more precisely as a "North West Voyageur" simply because it appears in the voyageur art of Howard Sivertson. For some examples, I checked out a book of his entitled, The Illustrated Voyageur: Paintings and Companion Stories which has some delightful anecdotes and illustrations, although probably not entirely accurate.

Cover of Sivertson's Voyageur themed book

In any event, I had made this blank many months ago from scraps of black walnut and a 3/4" wide strip of yellow poplar. Given the small width of the poplar, the walnut was laminated from the grip all the way to the blade resulting in a neat contrasting look in the shaft area. Walnut and Yellow Poplar are both very easy to carve and the simple, straight edges meant that cutting out and shaving down the blade and grip was very quick. This was one of the fastest paddles I carved out from a blank. Here are some pics of the job.


Unfinished paddle; Blade Closeup
Since I was using left over cutoff scraps, the grain pattern isn't perfectly symmetrical on the blade. There's also point on the blade where the grain reverses suddenly giving the appearance of a horizontal "scratch".

I've read plenty of criticisms of this blade design on canoeing forums with many paddlers literally calling this blade shape a piece of junk. Personally I found it an acceptable design although the larger squarish tip certainly made for a noisy entry and the recurved shoulders tended to cause some cavitation and loss of power when paddling with a quick pace. But I found that if I slowed down and relaxed the pace it handled well with underwater recoveries. The walnut-poplar lamination also resulted in a super-light paddle and there's no denying the rich-chocolatey appeal of the wood. Instead of adding any additional pyrography to this one, I've settled on simply oiling it and using it as an occasional light use paddle


Final work all oiled up