César’s Bark Canoe is a fantastic NFB (National Film Board) film from 1971, produced by Bernard Gosselin. It captures César Newashish, a 67-year-old Attikamek of the Manawan Reserve north of Montreal, building a canoe solely from the materials from the forest, including birchbark, cedar splints, spruce roots and gum.
Last weekend the family and I launched the Freedom for the first time. It wasn’t quite “finished” in that I hadn’t varnished it yet, but I wanted to wait for the weather to cool a bit before spraying the urethane. And check out that paddle in some of the pictures!
After I installed the decks, I concentrated on finishing the outwales, seat placement and thwarts. The outwale install was okay but I had a couple of issues. First, I had some gaps between the cedar hull and the ash outwales. This was just cosmetic near the top surface, and I filled them with epoxy + wood flour.
Each end of the outwales was screwed through the hull and into the deck. I used a fostner bit to counterbore the outwale. Using brass screws is tricky because they are soft and need a larger pre-drill so that it doesn’t bind before the threads catch into the deck. I used some birch dowel to fill the counterbores. I would have preferred walnut dowels but I didn’t know where to get any and I didn’t want to make them.
Next I worked on hanging the seats. I simply followed the guide from Canoecraft and didn’t come across anything unusual.
Before finishing the seats I had to replace the hardwood dowels in the corners of the caning with softwood. I shaped a bunch of tapered dowels from cedar using a Japanese rasp.
One big “oops” was when I realized that I had forgotten to remove the masking tape from underneath one of the outwales when I glued it to the hull. That meant that I had to cut and scrape a whole bunch of blue tape that was epoxied to the hull. Yuck.
For painters holes, and for attaching end ropes to the canoe, I decided to use bored dowel. I bought a 1″ birch dowel from Lee Valley. I then used a 1″ spade bit to drill through the hull. The area was wet out with thickened epoxy and the dowel was slid through the hole. Once set, I used a 1/2″ spade drill bit to bore through the dowel. The fit was pretty tight between the hull and the dowel and unfortunately on one side of the hull the fiberglass/wood was stressed and displaced when the dowel was inserted. I’m not sure if there will be any last effects, only time will tell.
Finally I varnished all of the thwarts and gunwales. I was really pleased with how the decks and gunwales turned out. The thickened epoxy I used for gap filling between the outwales and hull was a non-issue. The varnish made the wrc turn a very dark brown, which really complements the lighter gunwales that sit on either side of it.
After installing the inwales I turned my attention to the decks. As usual, I pretty much followed the words of wisdom found in Canoecraft. However, there are a few interesting bits to mention. First, I managed to find a nice piece of sapele at a local lumber store. There was about 1 board.ft sitting in a bin of scrap wood that they use for stacking lumber. I still had to pay for the wood, but at least I only needed to buy a small piece. It cost me $10.
I resorted to a few more sluggo special jigs for the deck glue-up and shaping:
I had some problems screwing the decks into the inwales. First I predrilled with a 1/8″ bit for #8 screws. I got a couple of screws in, but then I broke one. Next I predrilled 1/8″ into the deck, and then 5/32″ through the inwale. I still broke a screw. Finally I settled on this pattern: start with a 3/8″ forstner bit for countersink, drill 5/32″ through the inwale and deck, then finally drill 3/16″ through the inwale.
I managed to shape the decks ok and the fit was pretty good for me. I had some Elmers wood filler that did an excellent job of filling gaps between the cherry and sapele:
And used thickened epoxy for gaps between the decks and the inwales. Once it’s sanded I think it will look quite okay.
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