canoe maker

Came across an image of a paddle carving workshop focusing on the traditional elongated Cree design (one of my favourites). This deep water paddle design doesn't require a very wide piece of lumber stock yet provides quite a bit of power given its length. The gentleman on the right is holding a painted paddle which resembles some of the painted artwork of Cree paddles in the Canadian Museum of Civilization

Another one of the paddles on my ever growing "to do list" is the 1896 Malecite St.John River Paddle documented in Adney's Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America.  The blade looks to be standard beavertail with a distinct spine, but the grip has some rectangular features and a carved drip ring which suites the paddle nicely.



Adney's St. John Malecite Pattern
After casually examining some of my books the other day, I recognized this grip pattern on the cover of Graham Warren's must have paddle making book, Canoe Paddles: A Complete Guide to Making Your Own. The grip is featured near the bottom right of his book cover..



G Warren's book cover, St.John Malecite grip on lower right
Warren's first publication (which I blogged about here) has a complete illustration with a table of offsets for this pattern as well. Graham has also graciously re-published an article on his website entitled The Malecite St.John River Paddle (.pdf format) that appeared in Open Canoe in 1996 which features the detailed pattern for anyone interested in this design. The 2011 article entitled "Know Your Paddles" by Beth Stanley in Canadian Woodworking also has a closeup shot of this grip featured below.



St. John River Malecite Grip
At this stage though, it'll be while before I start this one. Still waiting to be completed is the decoration on the Yellow Birch York Sunbury replica. Plus I've been working on some more canoe related homemade camping gear that'll be posted on soon.

An illustration by artist Peter Rindisbacher (1806 � 1834) depicting a Chippewa (Ojibwe) family paddling a bark canoe. ...


Found it interesting that both the illustration and the film shot show the characters gripping the paddle in a sort of reverse, upwards grip where the bobble serves as a stopper of sorts. For another example of a modern day bobble gripped paddle, check out this 2010 post regarding a Western Cree style paddle made by Mike Elliot of Kettle River Canoes.

Back in '011, I mentioned an issue of Canadian Woodworking & Home Improvement had a short, illustrated article on canoe paddles. It was written by Beth Stanley, the Artisan Program Coordinator at the Canadian Canoe Museum.

Many thanks to blog reader and paddle maker Luc Poitras for once again finding an excellent example of a Malecite paddle online - this one from the collection of University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Anthropology. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a full image of the paddle including the grip area, but some low-resolution photos reveal an exquisite carving on the blade

Happy new year to all! Had some time to tinker around with some video footage of my summer daytrip to Crystal Falls on the Limberlost Wilderness Preserve. Here's a quick one minute video of the highlights...