Complete Birch Bark Canoe Build, from Birch Bark, Cedar, Spruce Root, Spruce Gum to Maiden Voyage

that uh that kathy she's at it again so after a lot of tedious hours filming me building the birchbark canoe she decided she put together a compilation of the entire build start to finish instead of all those short little segments similar to the one she did for our cabin build here so this is the first year in over 20 that we're not hunting moose with guns we've we've decided we're going hunting with a camera and well kathy's the cinematographer she's the one on the end of the camera and i'll be the one doing the paddling to get her close i hope and over the years of hunting i've got fairly handy at that talk and moose so i can call them in and it's going to be rather fun but the best part of this is we're actually going to put the new canoe build to the test so it's first trip so we're going late september early october that's the height of the rut for moose in the time when one can fairly easily call them into close range so i'm pretty excited about that our our our moussants typically we go way way north in northern ontario north of the james bay area if you would but for this hunt we've selected algonquin park which is a a park that doesn't allow hunting and has a healthy moose population there is no hunting pressure so that's going to increase the odds of kathy getting some really good footage we hope anyway what follows is the complete canoe build uh start to finish utilizing only things we were able to take from the forest and in my opinion the most amazing watercraft in the world [Music] [Music] i do believe that's my last piece of sheeting i'm gonna do a check yep that's gonna do it so i've got all the all my pieces of shading now that are going to line the canoe that go underneath the ribs i've got my ribs done and next thing i'm going to be working on is my thwarts that's a good good job to be finished a bunch of wafer thin six foot long to eight foot long pieces of cedar good job to be done so the reason i'm using ash is the this is where the canoe is really going to get its structural um integrity from so this that sort of side impact so i've sort of got that down to the dimension i want i've sort of rough scribed out my profile if you would of it and now i gotta draw that out and get it trimmed down to size okay i have completed with new material second time i've completed it actually so second set of guns so this would this is going to be the uh inner gunnel and what i've done is i've shaped it a one inch square they're about 16 feet long i'm going to be shortening them and then i put a 45 degree bevel on the back side so this this area here to put dory at it will go this way in the canoe on the interior so on the right right wall if you would facing forward and that corresponding uh or that 45 i should say that the ribs are going to get a 45 cut on them when they're driven in it's it's completely a friction fit when it's done anyway um pretty exciting because i'm going to start to lay this out today and very shortly it's going to start to have a shape of a canoe anyway i'm going to go over to my table and lay it out and that is the general shape that my new canoe is going to be i've got the um i've got the outer gunnels tied to my inner gunnels and i fitted my front here it's pretty close now it'll take some final work when i get down to putting the stem piece in it'll get thinned out a little bit in the inside here and i've got some water boiling so what i have to do at this point is i have to steam these guys to get them bent around so they project out a little bit because they're going to go way up on the stem of the canoe so i mentioned the bottom of the canoe the shape is called the rocker and what i'm working on now is the shear line so the shear line if you think of it if your canoe is sitting upright on the water the shear line is the shape or the profile from about a stern of the sidelines and this one's going to have quite a bit that's the way the algonquin built theirs especially their smaller hunter canoes so i've got the center thwart done which is sits right on the platform i've added one inch here which is starting to bring my my shear line up i've added four inches here using my measuring sticks i'm going to carbon copy that at the far end so i've started there the one part i haven't finished yet that's where the boiling water comes in is i've got to steam these guys in order to get that final bend in in the end pieces [Music] [Music] [Music] so what i've done here is i've i've built a jig uh for the stem piece and uh i'm gonna see if i can make one more here what i'm doing at this point is i'm putting it i'm tying off the one end that's going to be on the inside bottom of the canoe because when i split this guy down from the top by doing this i'll stop the split from going all the way through because i want this piece i want this portion to be solid and i want this split into ideally about eight pieces but i'll settle for six probably said this 100 times but when you're splitting any wood it's splitting it in half so we're gonna start by uh finding roughly the center of this guy and we're gonna hopefully get six to eight strips out of it and then as i split it down it's going to stop at my tie off [Music] point if it starts to run off you can put pressure on the thicker part and a little bend and ideally bring it back to uh to center there we go now i'm going to use a thinner blade for the next split so again i've got two halves so i'm going to split them in half so okay so you saw me try to bend that at the start and now you can see how easily that's going to bend especially once i put boiling water on and that turned out pretty good i'd like to get one more split in that guy but it's not going to have much of a bend up here and it's thin at the bottom so where the biggest part of the bend's going to be so i'm not going to mess with that so i was hoping for eight i got uh four i got seven seven will do it just fine so when you think about when when we harvested this the the the white side was out and the inner bark was in obviously so when we took it off the tree we there's no way you can roll such thick bark right off the tree opposite so we're turning it literally like taking a zog off and putting it on the other way so we had to soak it in the lake by the area we harvested it in and then we're able to gradually flatten it and get it rolled in this direction so now i got to get some boiling water going because we want to get it pliable and that's what the water does to it and then we're going to get this rolled out we're going to pick the best section cut off the surplus and yeah on goes the building frame okay this this may look a little excessive here with the rocks but it's twofold um and there is method to my madness number one is i want to get a nice flat bottom in the canoe so i've put a lot of weight on here which is flattened out that bark with the hot water and the next thing i'm going to do is take this beautiful piece of bargain i'm going to cut cracks in it and i'm going to cut it all the pieces so here we've got a natural blemish what they're called is gores so if you look along the canoe going forward you see all these buckles we've got here so what's happening we're taking a canoe that's this wide in the middle to a an actual point at either end so it wants to buckle so the method they use is it's called cutting gore so we're going to cut a crack from where it's going to bend at the bottom of the building frame to the outside and as they're folded up they're going to overlap and then afterwards i'm going to cut out sort of a if you visualize a straight cut i'm going to make and when it's folded up that this part is going to overlap this part then i'm going to cut that v out and they're just going to either get slightly overlaid or a lot of the builders the dif different native nations would actually just butt joint them so i haven't decided on which way i'm going to go there but the first thing i'm looking for is natural um faults if you would in the bark and i've got one here so that's that's my first gore and mother nature did that for me it came right off the tree that way so as i come down the canoe there's no there's no real math to this and they don't have to be symmetrical so one side can be have a gore in a slightly different spot than the other but because i've got a fairly gentle curve here i'm going to put a gore in and the bark's pretty good i'm going to put a gore in right here and you can see as i raise these pieces you can see how this this one's overlapping this one well that small piece of bark will get cut out later when we try to butt those those gores up so where i'm at now is the um uh i gotta eat more boiling water yeah more boiling water on this get this bent and get my clothespins on it once that's done i'm going to be putting battens along the sides in different positions and then these guys are going to get tied in together as we progress along once the battens are in place and that's going to give me a nice smooth line on the outside of the canoe and then the the next step before i can sew on my side panels is i got to get interstates in which are going to get tied to the inside of the outer stake so uh yeah starting to look like a rather agitated porcupine but it's coming together okay i finished cutting out this gore and you can see how i've i've flush mounted that and there's there's the triangular piece that i took out of it so i have to do that at every one of my gores cut out that little triangular piece and the next step is putting in the battens [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do so [Music] do [Music] so [Music] so [Music] some might find this a tedious job but uh this is at an absolutely perfect morning the uh temperature is like you almost need a coat on uh we got a breeze so there's no bugs and i'm in the process of of collecting my stitching material so i'm in mother nature's warehouse if you would in the construction of this canoe i'm going to need about 350 to 400 feet of root i have built canoes that needed over 500 feet so i'm getting off easy this time anyway i'll have to get these processed and uh like i'm gonna actually start stitching today hey you hey i thought you could use some help today uh you could always use some help never been one to turn down help we're gonna need a lot more root so you splitting it first and then peeling it or peeling it first and then splitting it or what i found splitting it first i soaking it in that boiling water helps and if i split it first sometimes the part comes off easy you're starting at the skinny end of the fat end fat end and then watch if you see how it's never round so it's kind of oblong shape so if you make your cut across the long way of it if it happens to be a narrow root you're going to get you're going to get more that didn't start very handy what if it starts sliding off center now let me just get this guy see how i can get this guy back to center so if it goes off center as you're as you're splitting it once you've done a bit of this you close your eyes but you push pressure on the fat side just like i did when i did the stem pieces for the canoe so that gets it back to center most of the time and then you just you can feel it as it goes down so again it's run off a bit that side so i want to bring it back to this side so i'm going to bend that fat side okay and that's fine if you've got i think you've got most of the or that one doesn't have any hair on it but these small little root fibers you pluck them off first they're like plucking a bird you get them off first it it'll peel somewhat easier um some some you can just strip one end to the other i don't know what it is and then others they really make you work for it we're sewing the side panels on now and i'm using a saddle stitch and this bark is awful thick which is good i mean it's going to be a durable canoe but what i'm essentially doing so i've got two threads and i've i'm putting one through and i'm bringing the second one out the same hole so to make the initial hole i use a tri three-sided awl and the reason i don't use a drill if i use a drill i remove the material in the bark and so when it it all dries up shrinks down tightens up if i use the awl i'm not removing fiber that the drill would do so the first hole goes through with the triangular awl in order to get the second bark through i can't i can't use this one to enlarge the hole because it would cut the the first thread so i use a i use a round awl to to enlarge the hole which i'm going to do now and start and then once the side panels are done i will be dissecting my gunnels taking the outer gunnels off setting the inner gunnels in and getting my shear line i'm maybe a little shy of bark so i may have to take a little bit of the shear out that i initially planned on but we'll see how that goes so i demonstrate a little closer here um what i'm talking about so i've got i've got two threads or roots uh and and so this one's passed through from the outside now i'm bringing this one and passing it through the same hole from the inside so essentially well it's called a saddle stitch and uh it's a strong stitch and it's easy to waterproof when i'm all finished so and at the start of it what i've done is i've locked in the two existing threads here this guy i'll be able to cut off after and tighten that up a little bit but essentially that's what we're going to do the entire length of the side panel and like i said once that's done the fun part starts because we set the gunnels in we find that gunner line start trimming the bark down and we start sewing sewing it all together and uh yeah before you know it it'll be floating so now i'm taking the inner one passing it through the same hole to the outside everything wiggles and wobbles and it looks like it's fragile as heck but when this is all done you flip this guy over you'll be able to take a baseball bat or a canoe paddle or stick to the bottom of it and you you simply can't damage them they are very strong craft and i think i mentioned in an earlier video with the exception of the bow and the stern so and the reason for that is we're not able to get a rib bent tight enough to get right in the very apex if you would of the front and the end of the canoe so but overall very strong craft when it's done next stitch this is a slow process pretty slow process it's got to be about it's going to be about the journey and not the destination when it comes to canoe building but it will float someday and yet more rocks rocks are a canoe builder's best friend so i've got my inner gunnels in uh and i've got shear posts that they sit on which established the line of the shear and i was able to um i was able to actually uh correct the front and back so i've got enough bark now both ends without having to make new short sports here so the next step i'm at right now is i've got all the shear posts in except this end so what i'm looking for this end's got to come up quite a bit something like so and these weight this weight will help keep that shear line so we're looking for symmetry uh front to back side to side and we're pretty much there so i got to make one shear post well we got a bunch of stuff happening now and uh it's actually starting to look like a canoe a lot of hours in but uh you're starting to see the general shape of it so i'm driving the stakes back in tying them off to keep that symmetry front to back and now i'm starting to cut down my excessive bark and driving the wooden square peg in a round hole and wherever you see a peg that that will be a lashing so lashing there lashing there lashing there and in between will be rib rib rib full length of the canoe and a whole lot of root gathering and a whole a whole lot of stitching but it's starting to take shape so [Music] so [Music] so the first thing i do is i take my knife and i take the widest part of the lacing and i put a small flat spot on it and then take my wooden pegs that have driven in and i drive them back up first you build it that loosens up the gun and then where my lashing goes insert my knife and i spread apart the gunnel from the bark so when i get it spread out enough that i can insert the root that's perfect next step is to nail it back again so once i've driven that back in i've got that anchored pretty good and the next step is to cut off the uh the wooden pegs so all the wooden pigs on the side of the are going to get hidden by the lashing [Laughter] point out too that so when we split it if we get a close look here the we've got a flat side we got a bottom side so the rounded side is always going to be on the outside of the canoe and the flat side goes against my inner and outer gunnels so so i get a nice tight fit and that that's why we split them that's why we don't use them round uh and it gives us a nice strong lash so at this point i'm gonna put a little point on the end of my sewing thread for lack of a better word one stiff enough and thin enough that it's going to go through the small holes that i'm going to make three holes that i will you with my triangular all again i'm not removing fiber but i'm just kind of pushing it aside and once the root dries out this just is just like it's nailed or screwed together in through the hole flat side against the bar i'm going to go three times through the first one kind of locks that really locks that guy in and get that nice and flat and we pull the first one through at this point if i have to all again in that same hole i don't it's very small i um i'll use the the round awl that way i don't cut the previous thread so that's my second pass through round all to just enlarge that just just enough to get the lace through so that's my third pass through triangular all second holes i'm trying to keep that up as tight both to the inner and the outer gunner to the bottom as possible so i don't rip out my bark now on the inside i'm going to lock it off with the last two wraps so i got to go through this hole twice so what i'm going to do is not tighten this down this time i'm going to leave a little slack here do that so there's the the tail end of the thing so i'm going to pass it back through the previous two loops and it's going to get hidden down underneath here when i'm all said and done you won't see this and that tail will get cut off then i go back to finding my first one which is this guy and working it back that's one of the two loops [Music] and that one's finished and we cut off the cut off the tail and we have one more one more lashing done and i don't know 50 some to go well maybe not quite it's coming along this is pretty neat because uh since i started the build uh this hasn't been movable and and now that i can move it about and start working on my end pieces uh it is one step closer to floating so i mentioned um when i when i first started constructing the swartz that i used measuring sticks so um it's it's really flat bottomed now and once the ribs are driven in it's going to be much deeper here so an average canoe is 12 to 13 inches so i've got about nine inches here to here and when i'm finished driving the ribs in i'm going to have about a 12 to a 13 inch deep canoe in the middle uh the shallowest part if you would a little bit bit deeper bow and stern and yeah that transformation for me it's the epitome of canoe building when i finally get down to um driving those ribs in and also the scariest part because you don't want to blow out at that point so you have to be pretty careful and we'll be demonstrating that [Music] [Music] i i have never worked with as thick a bark as this so you can just this thing here is about better than a quarter of an inch and and that's the kind of bark i'm dealing with which is going to be a rugged canoe but anyway so i've got the far end stitched and i'm working on on the um on this end now stitching so this stitch at the top um is above water line so it's not going to get pitched for from here down i'm going to do a next um stitching on following the gunnel line or sorry following the stem line and that's the part that'll get pitched because that'll be below water okay so i'm i'm not cooking supper here what i'm doing is i'm rendering down spruce gum so spruce gum is the primary component of the pitch we're going to use so we're going to boil it once and we're gonna strain it and then we're gonna boil it a second time strain it a second time [Music] [Music] [Music] anyway the next step here is i'm going to take it over and i'm going to add a little bit of bear fat to it so if we just use this straight up on the canoe when it cures and hardens it'll be brittle and it'll crack so we need to add a bit of bare fat to it to make it more malleable we don't want to add too much because if we add too much fat um it'll run off in the sun in the really warm weather so it's a it's a fine line and we're going to add just a little bit of the time a little bit at a time and do a wee bit of an experiment to to ensure that it's going to work on the canoe see i'm able to i'm actually able to bend that and you can see it's not cracking at all it's stain it's that's as my bark cracking but the pitch isn't so we've pretty much got the texture we want and that's going to seal the canoe up really good the reason i taper these down like really taper them off is like that's going to overlap the previous piece that i put in the long piece and we don't want a bulge there so when the ribs driving we want a really smooth platform if you would or floor of the canoe i have the sheathing all fitted into the canoe now and it was an exercise in patience to say the least what i've done at this point is i've i've laid all my ribs out in the position they're going to go and i've marked both sides and those pencil marks are going to be my bend marks so i think these have been in the water about long enough [Music] do [Music] do [Music] and today's the moment of truth we're going to be driving our ribs and it it amazes me that the indigenous people had it all figured out no screws no nail no glues they use compression and tension and it's all going to be held that together that way so this is the hardest gundle to make i broke a couple already this morning trying to dry fit them this one i think is going to work so what i do is i i taper down the sides uh and then i put a 45 on them and then i put a 45 on the top right here and and basically what that does on the inside of the inner gunnel there's a 45 degree bevel the entire length of that gunnel and it corresponds with this 45 so as it's driven in it's just that compression and tension that's going to going to hold this together anyway first rib [Music] what i do at this point is i mark the top of the gunnel and it's actually going to be when it's driven in that rib is going to be an inch lower on both sides and that's going to expand the bark and push the bark out at the bottom and that's why we're putting the boiling water on on everything so we've got to keep everything soaked there's a huge amount of stress put on the on the lacing as the ribs are being driven in and the bark so if we keep everything really well wetted down it lets that expand [Music] [Music] last one's a little tricky uh i had to make an extra one because i broke them anyway this one should work but now i'm in a position where i don't i have to offset them quite a bit like this in order to drive them in so i've driven them in now i'm going to drive them back out so i got to drive out two or three here hopefully just two partially and maybe one that way anyway it's a bit of finicky work to get the last guy in voila yeah that's one ribbed canoe so uh yeah i'm gonna let this guy dry out for a few days and uh then we're pitching it then we're gonna put the top gun or the caps and the gunnels and yeah we're off for a maiden voyage it's been a bit of a haul so this may look a little rude i mean spitting on my finger but what it does it allows me to form it and push it in between the threads or the stitching the root stitching and and i can form it and it doesn't stick to my finger otherwise i have a gob on it i don't know size of my fist almost there just the gore's just the gores and the bow and the stern and i think we need more spruce cup the last and i mean the very last piece of lacing that needs needed on this canoe so basically i'm just lashing because my inner gun is too thin there to put in my square peg i'd split it out so i'm lacing the two gunnel caps just at the very bow and stern and yeah last one [Music] [Music] my [Music] [Music] [Music] hmm so [Music] do do do do [Music] you

Channel: The Woodland Escape

Views: 58,891

Keywords: green woodworking, do it yourself, 18thcentury, 19'thcentury, americanhistory, canadianhistory, history channel, jas townsend, logcabin, rustic life, frontiere, wilderness, bushcraft, homestead, offgrid, pioneer life, 1800s, 1700s, native culture, black powder, flintlock, blacksmithing, handtools, woodworking, self sufficiency, self reliance, sustainable living, gardening, food preservation, root cellar, foraging, living history, living archeology, hunting, fishing, rumford fireplace, fireplace

Id: vbQmo6sAkIY

Length: 47min 54sec (2874 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 29 2022