Mixed Laminated Blanks

A little while ago, I decided to put the the loads of large cutoff scraps littering the locker room floor to good use and came up with a bunch of combinations for various laminated blanks. After another visit to The Carpenter's square I shaped this remaining blanks to size. Here's a before and after shot


Glued up scraps before


Specific paddle shapes emerge
The designs are (left to right):

• Narrow Ottertail with Decorative Maliseet Grip (Poplar/Cherry/Birch)
  
• Western Cree with square mushroom grip (Poplar/Birch)
  
• Large Ottertail with straight Maliseet grip (Cherry/Basswood)
  
• Voyageur with tripper grip (Maple/Cherry)
  
• Algonquin blade with Adirondack grip (Cherry/Basswood/Walnut)
  
• Reshaped Beothuk with bobble grip (Birch/Cherry)
  
• King Island Inuit (Cherry/Basswood/Walnut)
  
• Mini Maliseet (Poplar/Walnut)
  
• White Water with Battenkill grip (Maple/Walnut)

I had also decided to continue using up some of the smaller scraps to do some craftwork...basically cutting out some spoons, forks, spatulas, wooden blocks, knife handles, mini-paddles, and any other stuff to whittle out this summer. I brought a bucket full of these scraps and ended up with quite chache of goodies for intended projects down for down the road. At home, I layed out the inventory on the floor of my den and took a shot (with my wife's feet sticking into the shot).


Buckets of scraps; Inventory laid out on the floor

I guess they'll be plenty more posting on the blog to come.

Cherry Edged Beothuk - Part 1

Another paddle design that intrigued me was that of the Beothuk paddle descibed by Adney. The tragedy of the Beothuk extermination in Canada means that nearly all reliable info on this tribe has been lost to history, but Graham Warren has a nice plan of a surmised paddle with a "bobble" style grip in his first book that I blogged about earlier.

Given the graceful sloping design of the blade and its similarity to the 17th Century replica paddle I'd been working on, I thought I could steam laminate some cherry edging on this one as well. This paddle is cut from Yellow Birch (Betula alleghaniensis) and following my steaming procedure from before, a cherry strip was heated and clamped around the edge of the paddle blade. I took these shots while working the garage up the cottage.


Steaming the cherry; Clamping to the blade
Unfortunately, this time around, once I removed the screw clamps, the cherry split under the pressure at the tight turn at the tip and the foaming Polyurethane glue sprayed everywhere creating quite a nasty mess. The bulk of the cherry edging is fixed quite well however, so to salvage this paddle, I resketched the tip a few inches higher and will have to settle for a shorter blade length and an incomplete edging effect.


Split Edging; Redrawn blade
Rather than re-sawing this out by hand, I've decided to wait on this and bring it back to the city for a visit to The Carpenter's Square where it'll be reshaped with their bandsaw. We'll see if this major mistake can be corrected or if the paddle will need to be cut up and made into something else.

Update: Part 2 posted HERE

Birch Bark Baskets

During an unusually chilly summer evening up north, I used some of the harvested bark and left over spruce roots from the canoe build to make a few simple baskets, including some pieces of winter bark with crude etching. Both of these are simple foldup designs with a contrasting ring of bark as a skirt aroung the mouth made just like the mini-basket for the canoe but with all spruce root sewing. The bark was soaked in hot water and worked wet so as to minimize splitting. Etching out the winter bark was more challenging that I had thought so I ended up with pretty crude geometric lines on one basket and left the other "au natural". I've got even more respect for artists who can intricately shape patterns in this working medium.


Two different baskets
Anyway, we have some fake maple leaf ornaments at the cottage that were sitting in a utlitarian stainless steel "vase" (actually the cottage unused ice bucket...my parents' notion of artistic accent) so I decided to ditch the cold steel and place the ornaments in a basket on a shelf by the stairs, but eventually moved them to dresser counter in the guest room.


More rustic decoration for the cottage

I've actually since ordered Celebrating Birch: The Lore, Art, and Craft of an Ancient Tree from Amazon. Looks to be a fantastic book on the subject including some photo tutorials on making other bark crafts

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

Bark Harvest

With the completion of the model canoe, I've decided to try my hands at a few other birchbark crafts but this required scouting for a new bark supply. While up north, I decided to scrounge around some local secret hiking trails to try my luck and source out some birch with the intention of harvesting a small amount from fallen & dead trees only.

While hiking around I came across plenty of naturally downed Birch trees in various stages of rot, including a few large ones. Unfortunately, the quality of the bark had already begun to degrade on these trunks and so I simply harvested small pieces, many of which contained the darkened winter bark that I can use for etching purposes. The largest piece I was able to obtain is a 3 ft long, 22" wide piece that'll serve nicely for other projects.

Here are some pics:


Dead standing and fallen trees


Slicing down with the Mora


Peeling with cedar spud


The bark harvest from downed & rotting trees

I was also able to hook up with another canoe enthusiast who gratefully responded to my Kijiji ad requesting harvesting some bark legally from larger trees on anyone's private property. Paul gratitiously offered scouting on one of his properties up north and together we spent the day searching for bark from various deadfall and standing trees that were going to be cleared for a bush trail anyway. After wandering around and surverying the options, we ended up harvesting from a single tree while being swarmed by the season's unusually horrid mosquito population. The harvesting went slower as planned and the bark didn't "pop" off the tree easily despite the ideal time of the month to harvest...I guess last month's unusually colder temperatures hindered the natural release of bark that occurs during June/July. In the end, I ended up with 2 lengthy panels of 30" wide bark that'll be saved for the full scale build I intend to start later this summer.