Christmas Sprit?

Today we had our first significant snowstorm of the season. It got me thinking about Christmas Spirit. Some people think that they need to show their spirit in a big way. For example, take the following pictures:





So, I take it that "He with the biggest", uhhmm... "ornaments", yeah, "ornaments" wins?

Well, it seems that not everybody is in the Christmas spirit...

Wordless Wednesday

Tech Tip Tuesday

On the WoodenBoat Forum, a member posted a thread titled "Boat Building Safety". Ostensibly it was about about the canoe that he plans to build with/for his father and was discussing a picture of Ted Moores in his Canoecraft book. The thread was intended to discuss the WoodenBoat Hat as a "safety item". It brought to mind some safety items that are all too often forgotten in woodworking in general and building canoes in particular.

Wood dust has been noted as a potentially carcinogenic material. Some types of wood are toxic, some can cause allergic reactions, and airborne dust is both a potential fire and explosion risk. If you don't believe me, take a look at this MSDS sheet from JG Architectural Supply, a wood floor vendor from Maryland. After reading it, you'll wonder why the government hasn't recalled every bit of wood grown.

For the reasons noted in the MSDS, you should always have a good dust mask with appropriate filtration to protect your lungs, nose and mouth. Also, to prevent other hazards, a good dust-collection system to deal with dust and shavings created by power tools and a circulation filter to remove airborne dust are really great ideas. They not only help to keep the shop clean, but also help to keep the shop safe. A clean shop is a safe shop.

If you don't believe me that this is an issue, consider the following scenario from the building of a Wee Lassie canoe using three 8" wide, 12' long boards, nominally 1" thick (24 board feet of stock):

• If you start with S4S boards that are nominally four-quarters of an inch thick (really 3/4"), and use a 1/16" thick saw blade, you will turn 3.5 board feet worth of stock into sawdust ripping the stock into strips. (You turn 1 strip to dust for every four strips you cut!)
  
• When you mold cove and bead features on the strips, you will turn another 4.7 board feet worth of stock into dust and shavings. (You turn another strip to dust for every three that you mold!)
  
• Finally, when you fair and sand the hull before glassing, I figure another 2.2 board feet into curly plane shavings and sanding dust. (About 1/16" of thickness removed from the whole hull!)
  

That's a total of about 10.4 board feet that have been turned into dust or shavings in the process - a really amazing statistic considering that you started with 24 board feet of stock in the beginning of the process.

While we are discussing wood dust, don't forget that you want to be protected from all types of dust including from sanding epoxy, fillers (Like fumed silica, glass fiber, micro balloons, etc.) and varnish. When sanding the epoxy before varnish and between coats of varnish, remember that wet sanding works well and keeps the dust to a minimum.

A New Feature Strip

My students who are building the Prospector Ranger have been working on their stems and feature strips for the canoe over the past two weeks. Both the inner and outer stems were laminated together the week before Thanksgiving and the parts to create the feature strip were cut out just last weekend.

They have chosen to use Peruvian Black Walnut for the stems and trim on the canoe. They've selected Poplar and the Walnut for the feature strip as well. Here's a piece of the center that was dry-fitted to give an idea of what it will look like:


As I said, the strip is only dry fitted. When glued together, the joints that you see should disappear and the glued up blank will be about 1-1/2" by about 7/8" thick and 16' long. We'll clean up one side of the blank so that it is smooth and cut two 1/4" thick pieces (for both sides of the canoe) on the table saw and mold the edges with cove and bead.

One thing to keep in mind that many people forget. When you cut the "bead" side of the strip, you lose 1/8" of the exposed face, so if you want the top and bottom strip to be the same width when finished, you need to add an extra 1/8"!

Both students are beginning woodworkers and with very little prodding created a pretty design for the feature strip and executed it nicely! I'm very proud of their work.

Fantastic Historical Short Film

While I certainly cannot take credit for finding this film - a gentleman by the name of Bert Langley over at the WoodenBoat Forum found it. The film is about 15 minutes long and records the building of a traditional piroque (pirogue) by Cajun craftsman Abdon Allemon using traditional hand tools only. The film was made in 1949 by Arnold Eagle who was working with Robert Flaherty.

It is a true gem and shows the process from the harvest of the log to the launching of the boat.

Don't miss this one!

Wordless Wednesday

(click on image for full size)

Tech Tip Tuesday

From Wikipedia:

Portage refers to the practice of carrying watercraft or cargo over land to avoid river obstacles, or between two bodies of water. A place where this carrying occurs is also called a portage; a person doing the carrying is called a porter.

The name portage is derived from the french word "portage" and the french verb "porter" : to carry. Early French explorers ventured in New France and French Louisiana encountered many rapids and cascades. The Amerindians carried their canoes over land to avoid river obstacles. The french coureurs des bois and trappers used the french word "portage".

Over time, important portages were sometimes upgraded to canals with locks, and even portage railways. Primative portaging generally involves carrying the vessel and its contents across the portage in multiple trips. Small canoes can be portaged by carrying them inverted over one's shoulders and the center thwart may be designed in the style of a yoke to facilitate this. Historically, Voyageurs often employed a tump line on their head to carry a load on their back.

I want to delve a little bit into the yoke used to portage the canoe. If you are going to carry a canoe on your own, a yoke is a helpful thing to have and, if you've ever carried a canoe for any distance, a good yoke makes for a more comfortable portage.

I know this from some hard experience. When I was younger, we went on a canoe trip in Maine and my paddling partner and I were paddling a borrowed aluminum canoe.

It was shiny.

It was hot.

It was noisy.

It was heavy.

It didn't have a yoke.

We arrived at a portage of about a mile and a quarter in the rain. We took our paddles and square lashed them to the center thwart and the thwart behind the bow seat. It looked a lot like this:

The downside to this situation is that your head is between the paddles and it's not really comfortable, even with the canvas "horse collar" life jacket to pad your shoulders and neck. I must say that I don't like this situation of having your head trapped like this - if you trip and take a tumble, you wouldn't want your head in between the paddles. A better way to rig it is to have the tips of the paddle blades pointing toward the bow and overhang the center thwart by about 4-6 inches, creating a yoke.

In the Paddle Making Blog, there is a neat post on traditional carry methods using paddles and a tumpline to create a portaging rig. It has some excellent illustrations showing the rig in detail - well worth the look.

Today, most canoes have a yoke. They vary in design quite a great deal. It is important to recognize that the fit of a thwart is very individual - much like finding a good pair of shoes or a pair of pants that fit just right. If they don't fit right, they can be very uncomfortable. Also, it is important the the yoke is located very close to the balance point of the canoe, but is preferably a little heavy to the stern. (If the yoke opening faces the bow, of course.) This keeps the bow up so you can see as you portage. Note the variety of the yokes shown here (not including the thwart at top, or the grab handle at the bottom...):


Padding is an important addition The heavily padded yoke shown below are similar to ones that were made by Joe Seglia on his canoes. Jerry Stelmok shows some great pictures of Joe upholstering the yoke in his book about Joe. They appear to have been fairly common in the Michigan/Minnesota area.


Another way to go if you don't have a yoke or want it installed only part of the time is to have a removable one like this one by Old Town:


More padding is always good:


The heavily contoured "ox-yoke" style canoe yoke can work very well if it fits the person carrying the canoe. Fit cannot be emphasized enough.


Some people add a third seat to the center of the canoe that has a yoke built in. These are available commercially, but this one is home-made.


The canoes that my students build are small solo canoes. Because they are intended to be lightweight, they have little trim. In the case of the Wee Lassie and Wee Lassie II, we usually have a cane seat, a single thwart located behind the seat, decks, scuppered inwales and an outwale. Before this trim is added, the fiberglassed hull is, well, floppy. The trim helps add rigidity to the hull and helps it hold its shape under load. This doesn't mean that it is the only way to build the canoe - - there are many ways to finish the canoe. It's up to you to choose.

Because these are light-weight canoes, you can quite literally throw them over a shoulder and go. Still, even with a light-weight canoe or one with a good yoke, the best modern alternatives are the myriad of folding carts that take the load off your shoulders. Do remember that if the portage trail is rugged, these carts may do you little good! Smooth trails are a must!

I still think that the method below is the best way to portage!


(Portage Wagon from the Adirondack Museum in Blue Mountain Lake, NY, photo taken by Mwanner. Just add horses!)