Dug out canoes?

[Grooveski]

Anyone have any examples, recommendations or tips?

The suggestion that there might be a log to hack on up at Loch Tay has struck a bit of a nerve.
Finding out that my folks have an adze that they bought for the house renovation 15 years ago has really set me off on one.

So, I know nothing and am up for tossing ideas about.

Posting on SotP as well. The thread is here:
http://www.songofthepaddle.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?p=60794

 

[jojo]

One of those?

I'll post the rest of the article is that's what you're looking for.

 

[Grooveski]

Yeah, that might be the kind of thing we're looking for.

Tease .

You up to anything at the end of october?

 

[Eric_Methven]

I think they're looking at making four up at the Crannog. Two burn and scrape method and the other two chainsawed out just to make the numbers up. Should be fun.

If anyone is going up for that, and fancies making themselves a replica iron age adze I can do some instructions. All you need is an old plane blade and a lump of wood and some leather or rawhide thong.

Eric

 

[jojo]

ok. This is page one of the article. The first one I posted was page two! Makes sense

Oops, forgot to resize. If it's too big, I'll resize it after work.

 

[BorderReiver]

.. and fancies making themselves a replica iron age adze I can do some instructions. All you need is an old plane blade and a lump of wood and some leather or rawhide thong.

Eric

Sounds intriguing Eric.

 

[gregorach]

Yeah, it's a cool idea and I'd be up for having a go - but if "experienced craftsmen ... could completely shape and finish an average canoe in just three weeks", I think we may have our work cut out for us...

 

[Grooveski]

Cracking wee article jojo, thanks for that. Thinking about it, stone tools would likely chip away at charred wood quite well.

Pierre dropped me a line advocating steaming out the thinned hull by filling it with water and hot rocking while jacking out the gunnals. It's a fascinating thought. I'd always thought of dugouts as chunky, thick-walled affairs.

He also mentioned calipers. You wouldn't happen to have a set of huge novelty calipers Eric?

 

[Toddy]

One of the Bronze/Iron Age activities I do with kids is scraping out a burned bowl using both flint and bronze scrapers; the flint always wins

cheers,
Toddy

 

[JohnC]

I can do some instructions....

Eric

That would be useful..

 

[Eric_Methven]

The callipers are just two 'S' shaped pieces of wood. One is reversed and they are pinned through the middle. When you pinch the side of the canoe with the bottom half of the callipers, the gap reflected in the top half shows the thickness at that point. Easy peasy!

Eric

 

[mr dazzler]

I think they're looking at making four up at the Crannog. Two burn and scrape method and the other two chainsawed out just to make the numbers up. Should be fun.

If anyone is going up for that, and fancies making themselves a replica iron age adze I can do some instructions. All you need is an old plane blade and a lump of wood and some leather or rawhide thong.

Eric

Sounds like an elbow adze? As it happens I just made a nice decent length of rawhide rope from an old drumhead (real sort that I got for a few pence in a charoty shop) I cut it into a spiral, soaked it then twist it round and round till it goes cylindrical then stretch it. When I want to use it I'll soak it again. I saw an african drum maker do that to recycle his old drum head's. Seeing as I am working on plans to build a umiak, I thought why not build an elboew adze to shape parts and a bow drill as well to do the lash holes out of respect to the inuit crats tradition, and do as they did.
For dug out canoe boat building check out damian goodburn the mad axe man who appears on time team from time to time

http://www.logontothesevern.co.uk/blog/wp-gallery2.php

 

[Tadpole]

The callipers are just two 'S' shaped pieces of wood. One is reversed and they are pinned through the middle. When you pinch the side of the canoe with the bottom half of the callipers, the gap reflected in the top half shows the thickness at that point. Easy peasy!

Eric

I think they are called Double-ended outside calipers
picture here

 

[Tengu]

A lot of effort in making one but they will last decades instead of a few years like a birch bark one would

I think they were using some in some places in GB up to the medieval times.

Has anyone got any comprehensive infor on GB boat discoveries??

 

[Toddy]

It's actually an incredibly complex subject.

Usually the information comes from specific sites under investigation; the ships of the Port of London for instance, which has a Phoenician craft among it's bronze age log boats and medieval barges.
Many of the Universities also have lists, Boats and Ships of Ireland at the University of Ulster, as an example, or the Scottish Trust for Underwater Archaeology, associated with the Crannog and the log boat that's sitting underwater near the modern building (the boat was well over 10m long)
We consider the Iron age to be the beginning of clinker built boats in this country ( the Solent finds, I think )

cheers,
Toddy

 

[jojo]

Page 3 beauty!

Page 4.

page 5

That's it , the whole article.

There are a couple of different ideas on how to check the shape and the thickness of the "planking".

I remember reading an article once somewhere about using water and hot stones to soften the hull enough to expand the sides of large North West Coast canoes like this one:

The scanned pic isn't great but shows the sgape of the canoe quite well.

 

[commandocal]

they look great need one hell of a big tree if you wanted to sit in it

 

[mr dazzler]

I rthink with some canoe style's they carve the form out of a narrow log, but then form the sides into a wider form by heat (steam bending or thermo forming basically, with battons wedgd in to keep the form pushed out till it sets, similar to how they set up the gunwahles to build a kayaq), so a 3 foot wid boat might of come out of a 2 foot log or whatever. I think some of the african brother's do a similar method also.

 

[Grooveski]

It's odd sometimes comparing methods from around the world. There are places that are still making things, places with their own designs and others where, like here, all you have to go on are chance finds in peat bogs..

Brings up that whole "Is absence of evidence evidence of absence?" issue.
It's possible to build a dugout with a keel, rocker and splayed gunnels but have they ever cropped up in the region and time period in question?

P.S. I now have my grubby mits on a two handed adz, cleared for group use.