Dugout Canoe Carving: The Story of Belladonna Beaver

stop a while and listen to my story I've just come down from the hills I went there to find my childhood sweetheart miss the roses and the whippoorwills I returned to look for the old pine tree as hot as my memory so it was there and she said she'd be waiting for me when we carved our hearts long ago but the old pine tree is gone still my love for her lingers on they cut down the old country and they [Music] you knocked a couple feet off the end for us this is gonna be your spot right there front of my home for the next month or two [Music] that's hard hi there my name is Tom Appel and I have long dreamed of carving a dugout canoe and paddling it down the river and this year I have the amazing opportunity to do that working with Churchill Clark the great-great-great-great grandson of Captain Williams part of the Lewis and Clark expedition I intended to carve a canoe out of cottonwood tree however the one I had picked out was just a little bit too small so instead I bought this great big old Douglas fir tree from a sawmill and hadn't hollowed out to camp which is great except that the wood is really hard and really four knots that's why we love the change on the Churchill has carved several dugout canoes before working with the traditional hand tools such as the adds while this tree demanded use of the chainsaw so use the hand tools I use power tools and then we roped in friends and whoever else we can find to come beat on the tree yeah the sawmill that marked over one side is the top while Churchill looked at it and designers that was probably going to be the bottom and so it's really our first step was to flatten out the bottom well leaving the the two ends undisturbed there in case we've changed their mind and decided to make the getting the time to turn it over [Music] yeah it gets easy every time Churchill marked out guidelines along the top of the canal and then I took the chainsaw and I guess because I could go we start hollowing out [Music] [Laughter] coming right up what that's going down the hardest part is getting that first wedge out once that's out of the way the rest of it should theoretically come out a whole lot easier [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] the rough cut is done inside anyway hey yeah oh man mmm that's a lot of canoe with the inside of the canary opt-out it was time to rough out the outside of the canoe starting by trimming the stern and bow line [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] nice see those lines clean it up on the side down astern or rough pointed already this is a functional canoe already over everything that we trimmed saw we would typically travel numerous times taking off a little bit at a time being careful not to go too far and even though we're just a few days with the project here it would actually take us months to finish it being more and more careful as the edge closer to Camille oh if you look good [Music] oh look at that [Music] okay time to flip her back over again it should be a lot easier now don't you hardly know it [Music] with the bottom side up again it was time to trim off the hood and tail that we previously left on as insurance in case we decided to bake to the bottom the top then it was time to attach the log wizard to chainsaw to give us a more precise tool for flattening the bottom of the canoe the log wizard is essentially a planer blade that runs by the change in time and is usually used for debarking the trees [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] the wood is drying I mean I that SAP would shoot at the end of work each day Churchill oiled all the knots on the tree cui prevent them from drying out and cracking you want to get that going around that's SAP it looks like on this one of the reasons that the long has to be so big to make it back out canoe there's not all of the stops plate that would be removed to get down harder nicer would make a really classy canoe and Churchill used the scarfing tool to remove the SAP wood well I continue to plan out the bottom with the log wizard [Music] [Music] all right look at that this canoe is already starting to show some nice curves [Music] [Music] we already cut this start of now light once now we're doing the cuts again to get closer and closer with a final shape of the canoe oh yeah look at that [Music] that's party yeah you'd be able to steer her right now man I'm telling you back on the tail end of the canoe we had some work to do to chop in and try to get to the bottom of a deep cut that I made back when we cut the first set of stern lines that's why I do is go down the ridge and then then go down one of the two that you create just keep doing wherever we end up that'll determine the final shape of the stern while I continue chopping away at the stern Churchill moved up and started shaping the sides and bow lines [Music] and Doug Fernwood dries and cracks very easily which is pretty disconcerting when you're trying to build a canoe we oiled it liberally every day after work in this case using up some old secondhand oil stain [Music] she's still a bee beast but at this point light enough that just the two of us can roll her over while the outside of the canoe is starting to shape up pretty nicely the inside of the canoe still has a long way to go [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] we're still only about week into this project and he got into it really looking good that deep chainsaw cut in the back went all the way through in one spot which required some gorilla glue to seal it up on the outside Filch the entire track with epoxy from the inside we systematically reduced several thousand pounds of wood to wood chips and Sano's which we then raked especially where the grass was then to serve as mulch to hopefully hold in moisture and encourage the grass to I switch back and forth between the log wizard and the ad using the ads to clean out the corners with the log wizard wouldn't go the luck wizard also came in handy to grind away those big old knocks on the outside so much better yeah yeah at this point we started thinning out the walls from inside the canoe being careful to leave plenty of thickness at the top for the gunnels we girly shared the project with whoever came along including now some guys from local chapter of the American Mountain down like Churchill observed what appeared to be a beaver face in the bow of the canoe with a knot serving as an eye and he started to work with that to sculpt it out to bring the beaver face to life I kept going deeper and deeper with the log wizard back and forth layer by layer until I had turned six inches of wood to sawdust well I did a lot of grunt work to remove bulk material Churchill brought the artistic skill and captainship to sculpt the canoes that it would be not just beautiful but also highly functional on water and finally it was time to move the canoe closer to the electricity to start doing some work with the grinder he's really enjoying the moisture the colors really popping this morning you see the pink color of heartwood the yellowish stuff is exactly at this point of the process it looks like we're down to the finishing details yet the reality is that the walls are still four to six inches thick and the head is a Seles block of wood we still have a lot of material through but we're gonna go more slowly and take care that we don't take off too much the chainsaw marks in the gunnels are left over from the beginning of the process and we've blocked out the middle of the canal and now Churchill was digging into those seeing how far we need to come back the gunnels in order to completely remove those life [Music] well weird all day on one half of the bow but we were getting her nice man I starting to fix that Noah's it's a little wacky bring it down a little bit and do the final shape I'm gonna bring this stuff in after I'm done over here and I'm probably gonna bring this eye down and in a little bit too to match this one I think this one's a little bit further in and certainly down a little bit okay time for brain surgery here we're going to all about to have and get rid of some of this extra weight [Music] well we've used quite a few tools like getting up in Southie inaudible I've been waiting for this disc this is a very special it's made for a Philip weld to smooth them out the metal welds and corners of things and it's got a fully rounded blade and that's what I need to do the fancy stuff pop it on the tail there [Music] we're getting shape here on the stern we are absolutely getting the shape all around we got the seat shaping up and getting a good scoop on this side and matching it pretty darn well not a bad shape on the stern there and she is pretty flat we did leave her like this but she's got pretty good lines man that they're pretty symmetrical and a little point on the bow here I kept working with the log where they're trying to dig out those corners which is a whole lot easier to do [Music] any handcrafted that both needs a name and this one is such a beauty that I named her belladonna beaver and here we're cutting out a wedge to better define the tail is that five bar out here been working on the portside all day she's really cleaning up nice but if you'll notice look at the wavy lines that's the cracks opening up as I'm working on she really liked the moisture from the last couple days and the rain here and there and she tightened up quite a bit I'm trying to get this side done pretty bad mostly at the ends let me tell you cracks are beyond me I just I decided to go ahead and boil this side I decide to fill it with water to keep the bottom from cracking anymore and even though it's leaking out it's gonna take quite a while and this hopefully will keep it from cracking any more on the bottom really big day Tom's bringing down the gunnels I asked him to go ahead and use the saw and we'll be knocking them down man he's gonna lose some weight here it's always scary pulling down the gunnels but it's one of the last thing that you and that's there's reason for it there's a couple of reasons for it but it's very important to get this right and get her even on both sides and she's gonna lose a lot of weight just losing the couple of inches you know wide coverage is down [Music] the wigs and she is Bella the beaver Bella the dugout canoe this is Tom's baby I got seeing I'm pretty proud of this could either it's gonna be an interesting day we've got two months into this project so far and now that the mosquitoes are starting to hatch out there's time to load Bella up and take her up to the house where it's high and dry and there's no mosquitoes [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] I got the inside how the starboard side done pretty much we've got the transition smoothed out and then the bottom is flat is we're gonna pretty much she's looking really good I'm so excited at long last we stuffed epoxy deep into all the cracks finished the finish coats and then took her out on the water whoo ha ha ha be sure to watch my video the Moriah River canoe trip to see her maiden voyage down the river [Music]

Channel: Thomas J Elpel

Views: 2,270,399

Rating: 4.52353 out of 5

Keywords: dugout, canoe, carving, Lewis and Clark, Churchill Clark, adze, adz, Tom Elpel, Missouri River, Douglas fir

Id: CipwviRWeCU

Length: 30min 0sec (1800 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 29 2018