Yak

Central New Brunswick Woodmen's Museum has an interesting decorated bark canoe. The catalogue info on Artefacts Canada's site doesn't list any dimensions but the the bark is painted brown with some decorative motifs as well as green planking & ribs on the inside. The list it as a "woodland canoe" that is dated somewhere before 1979. Here are some pics


Painted hull, ribs & sheathing
The gunwales are nailed rather than lashed, a common procedure in modern bark canoe building (See Ferdy Goode's Ash Gunwaled Canoe). But what really caught my eye is that there are no root lashings attaching the side panel bark. These pieces are nailed on as well as being positioned with the side panel overlapping the main hull sheet on top. Normally, I've seen this reversed so that water doesn't get forced into the seam. Don't know if the gum has since fallen off, but the seam doesn't have any waterproofing pitch.


Side panel seam & panel decoration
The ends seem to have a strip of canvas or other material to cover the cutwater edge as well as remnant marks of a crossed-lashing pattern. The small bit of bark folded over the edge is what is the Wulegessis, an Abenaki term for the protective bark cover that also served a decorative function. These tend to be found on East Coast origin canoes apparently.


Canvas covered ends
Just the interior and exterior painting alone make this a pretty unique canoe. If I'm ever out to the East Coast, I'd like to swing by this museum for a closer peek.

With the bed all constructed, bark cleaned up, form & stakes all ready it was time for the foldup of the hull. An exciting time for because the inital inklings of a hull shape appear. First, the plywood form was placed back on the cleaned bark and centred with a guideline string. Then it was weighed with down with concrete patio slabs and as as many large stones as I could find in the immediate area. At this stage, there was no way the plywood form would shift out of position.


Form centred with guideline; Weighed down with stone
Next, some gore guts needed to be made. Some of the bark panels already had some minor splits along the edges so rather than cut perfectly symmetrical gores every foot or so, I followed these natural splits and ended up with sufficient gores to foldup the bark. With plenty of boiling water from some electric kettles on hand, I proceeded to soften the bark and begin the foldup process (from stern to bow). Along the way, the overlaps were carefully arranged to ensure the seams pointed in the same direction (towards the stern) while the stakes were driven into their holes to hold the bark loosely into place


Cutting a gore; Beginning foldup; Completed foldup of main panels
Despite the wide tree (40" circumference) I had harvested from, this was still insufficient to form a hull of sufficient depth, so some side panels needed to be cut into place. Using some bark harvested from Canoe buddy Paul's property, I cut rectangular panels to fit along the side. These will need to be stitched into place before any other major work can be done with the canoe.


Cutting side panel bark; panel view inside; panel view outside
After playing around with the positioning of the bark, the inner staves and outer stakes were tied to each other and then these were tied off to their parallel versions to bring the hull side to nearly vertical. Traditionally, tying was done with basswood bark, but I didn't want to harvest from a living tree so I ended up using some non-traditional nylon cord. Before the tie-up, long battens of thin cedar scrap (from the initial splitting to form the gunwales were slide between the bark and the stakes to even out the pressure on the bark. Here's the final result...


The folded up hull
Next up, working on the inwale assembly and beginning the tedious process of stitched the panels together before lashing in of the inwales can proceed.

Another fantastic film on the National Film Board of Canada's free site is Survival in the Bush, a 30 minute short filmed in 1954 as a sort of precursor to today's hitshow Survivorman.

The producer, Bob Anderson and an Algonquin guide (plus a camera man) are left in the wilds of Northern Quebec for three weeks, purposely soaked to the neck in cold water with an axe as the only permitted survival tool. In the process, the fantastic Algonquin guide by the name of Angus Baptiste manages to make fire with a split jackpine fireboard, assemble a birchbark lean-to for shelter, catch some sturgeon with a spear and his bare hands, build a successful bear trap (warning...dead bear footage for those who are queezy), and to top it all off, make a birch bark canoe for the three men to paddle out on.

Unfortunately, most of the detailed work documenting the canoe is not shown but here are some stills of the fantastic craft - completed with winter bark decorative etchings.


Bark staked out


Ready for gumming


Portaging down to the water


Paddling away
If you can get past the typical western-centric narrative of the producer as well as some of the scripted dialogue, there are some gems of info in this short film. Typical for the times however, Angus Baptiste, the Algonquin guide who really does all the work isn't even listed with the credits at the end.