Today Renee, Christian and I took a very close look at the dugout canoe which had been used for trapping by several generations of our first interviewee. First we lowered it from the rafters of his home, where it has hung for twenty-five years, emptying that many years of dust, dirt, some stored gear and at least three pennies (who says this doesn't pay?). After setting the boat on sawhorses it was vacuumed out and we made ready to measure the its shape. Eventually we will produce a scale drawing of the boat.
Unlike the other boats we have seen, which feature flat bottoms and sides with hard chines (corners), the dugout is a complex rounded shape. This dugout is a hollowed-out log, probably pine, showing no attempt on the part of the builders to spread the sides in any way. The owner surmises that the flat transom was added after construction, which family lore says was originally done by Native Americans. The sides are surprisingly thin, and in addition to the added transom there are pieces added at the bow as well, whether repairs or part of the original construction is not clear. The boat is almost completely sheathed in roofing tin and reinforced with a series of straps, including old hinges. Since the age is unknown, we did think that the label on the tin, the Follonsbee Forge, might give us some clues. A web search shows that the firm has been around for many years, and is actually still in business!
We used the "tick stick" method to get the shape of the hull, inside and out. We mounted panels faced with paper on selected station and then, holding the tick stick against the face of the hull, traced the position of the stick on to the paper. Later we can lay our paper down on the drawing board, line up our tick stick on our tracings (the ticks, or notches, allow us to align it perfectly) and then mark the point on the hull. We connect the dots and get the cross-section of the hull. Crude perhaps, but very effective.
Renee and Christian getting the hull shape inside and out. We aligned our plywood at specific stations, and recorded reference marks in relation to the string centerline
The owner of the canoe pointed out some interesting details: he kept us guessing then told us the small loop of leather nailed to one side was a hatchet holder, and he showed us the obvious wear marks in the bottom where the trappers had stood to pole the canoe. Christian noticed the tool marks left by the round bottom plane used to finish the inside of the hull.
Hatchet holder. There are also some metal hooks inside the hull for hanging a rifle.
You can see the plane marks running across the bottom of the photo...
...probably made by a plane like this.
We have finished fairing the lines we drew full-size of the Weybridge boat. Now we can compile those measurement into a corrected table of offsets that would allow anyone to build a copy of that boat. I say "corrected" because the deterioration of the hull has allowed the shape to change significantly, which became obvious when we laid a batten on our points on the lofting. By fairing those curves we've worked back to what is probably very close to the boat's original shape. With this canoe we will not do any correcting, or fairing. For one thing, the canoe is so stiff that its shape has probably not changed perceptibly and secondly, it will naturally have a random shape due to its construction as essentially a carved object. When we draw the canoe it will be as-is, recording the shape exactly as its builders made it by hollowing a large log. To borrow from a current advertisement: inspired by nature.
Douglas Brooks
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