gunnix said:I'd like to build a skin over frame canoe as well. I do a shipbuilding course, but the work needed to build solid wooden boats is crazy, a skin over frame boat must be way more enjoyable to build.
I really loved to see ray mears build the birch bark canoe in the open air with so little tools! No noisy machines and indoor building. I'd really love to build canoes that way
Torjusg, what do you mean by "damaged pine" ?
If you get your hands on a big elm or spruce you can very well use that bark, as I wrote in an earlier post.
To increase the durability of pine can be increased a lot by removing a lot of the bark and cutting of the tree-top. Then you just have to wait 30 years or so to have extremely high quality timber.
You probably don't want to wait 30 years, so you will have to find one that has been damaged by lightning or similar. Potentially, you could use juniper, which is also very rot-resistant, but they grow very slowly, so it would border on a crime to chop it down. Also, make sure the tree is straight grained before you cut it. That you can see by looking straight up the tree and see whether the limbs align perfectly in a straight line up the tree.
I also have a picture of a now retired spruce bark canoe in the gallery.
Feel free to ask more questions if you need to.
