Main Discussion Area > Primitive Skills
dugout canoes
RBLusthaus:
There is a video out there where after the boat was mostly hollowed, they had it up on horses, filled it party with water, and inserted hot rocks till the water was real hot, an inserted cross members to spread the sides. The weight of the water and rocks also had the effect of sagging the bottom of the boat in the middle creating some rocker fore and aft.
I would love to try this one day - the whole dug out thing, I mean.
JW's idea about finding the natural top of the log is genius, I think.
Russ
BowEd:
Very cool....Looks like an ambitious worth while project to me.Hope you show pics of it later.Slick way of finding the thickness depth with dowels too.That myself would be of concern to me.
When I used to rendezvous lots the Lewis and Clark rendezvous at Onawa in western Iowa has a couple of cottonwood dugout canoes and the oak keel boat functioning at the lake there.Pretty neat.
Onebowonder:
The fire/burned out technique also avoids cracks and splits and other impact damage as you might cause with pounding and hacking tools. With the controlled burning method, you are only scraping away charred wood. Power tools might not create the same kind of damage as hacking tools like an ax or an adze.
The Cherokee used giant Poplars, but they are not too easy to find these days. I saw records of one that was built from a tree the was nearly 5 feet in diameter.
OneBow
mullet:
The fire also helped in sealing the dugouts when pine was used.
Outbackbob48:
I attended the Bald Eagle knapping this weekend and they delivered a 12' Tulip Popalar log and Steve (caveman2553) tore into it with all stone axes and adz, Totally amazed at the chips he was getting with his peck and grind stone axes, check out Bald Eagle site or maybe Steve will see this and add some pics. Bob
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