canoe maker

The Adirondack Museum in Blue Mountain, NY, is featuring an antique show on August 14-15, 2010. A pic from their event page shows some paddles featured in the sale.


Antique Paddles from the Cherry Gallery
The set includes some interesting Northwoods style paddles with elongated grips. In particular the largest paddle on the far left has a grip shape reminiscient of the grey painted Penobscot paddle sold by Summer Antiques in Lake Placid, New York.

The painted red paddle has in interesting sculpted grip shape and while I'm not a big fan of painted paddles, this one stands out for whatever reason. A few feature some interesting etchings and pyrography and the tiny dark paddle (3rd from right) has a spherical grip very similar to basic Adirondack Guide paddles.

For those in the area, this might be an fascinating event to check out. Here's some additional info from their site.

The Antiques Show and Sale will feature, vintage Adirondack furniture, historic guide boats & canoes, genuine Old Hickory, fine art, Native American jewelry & artifacts, folk art, Oriental & Persian rugs, Olympic advertising, camp & trade signs, taxidermy, books & ephemera for the collector, and everything camp and cottage. Managed by Rod Lich, Inc.

Hope all the Canadian visitors to the site had a great Canada Day break. We were fortunate to score some time up at the cottage where the weather was phenomenal. The little one got to enjoy his first canoe jaunt of the season in our small fiberglass clunker.




Future Voyageur enjoying the ride
Also had time on the weekend to work on a series of ongoing projects. I've been slowly working on a birch Kuksa cup since last fall and it's progressing quite nicely with the Orien Crooked Knife. Learned that bourbon and crooked knife carving don't combine well as I sliced open my left thumb (and grossed out the Mrs.).


Kuksa work before the blood-letting
With the thumb bandaged up, I diverted my attention to making a canoe awl from a rusty, triangular file. When I worked on the bark canoe project, I simply ground down the tip of an old Phillips screwdriver to a point. It worked, but I want a lasting tool as part of my growing kit. The file was annealed in the evening campfire by simply heating up to cherry red and then letting it cool slowly in a can of pre-collected ash. The next day, the rust and teeth were easily ground off with a file. A sharp tip was shaped easily, the tang broken off and the awl epoxied into a birch cutoff that formed the handle. A nice evening of pyrography decoration (& more bourbon) to match my crooked knife and it was done.


The Rusty File; Filing off rust & teeth; Forming a pointed tip


Completed Awl Decoration
I was intrigued by this fantastic leather braiding tutorial by Schwert on making a dogbone awl sheath. Orien M was kind enough to send some rawhide when I ordered the knife blade and a portion was used to serve as the core of the sheath. The twisted wet rawhide was secured over the greased blade with some waxed thread and dried overnight.


Wrapping wet rawhide around awl blade
Over 2 evenings with lots of frustration given my pudgy fingers and bandaged thumb, I ended up with my simplified version of his decorative sheath, complete with a single Turk's head knot at the end and waxed thread whipping at the tip.


Leather Braided Rawhide Core Sheath


The growing tool collection
I was planning on improving the improvised sheath for the crooked knife too but that'll have to wait.

A post on LiveAuctioneers for a completed auction had some pics of interesting and historically significant bark canoe model. Decorated with various coloured dyes, the painted canoe and figurines include 2 decorated paddles with some geometric patterns.




Closeup: Paddle Decoration
The description on the site is as follows:

...of classic form, with wood sheathing, ribs and crossbars, sewn with split roots and seams sealed with spruce gum, the exterior finely painted, in red, white, and black paint, with curvilinear designs and a series of dots outlining motifs, the male and female doll, each with modelled wax heads, arms and legs, wearing traditional costumes and accessories, the baby, in a fully appointed carrier; together with equipment including: a powder horn, tobaggon, a keg and a snowshoe.

Some searching revealed another photo of what I think is the same model which better illustrates the chevron stripes on both paddles.


Another view
If these souvenir canoes were indeed painted by First Nations artisans, it may reflect this common theme of also illustrated in many historical paintings of the era.

Yesterday was National Canoe Day, an event run by the Canadian Canoe Museum to celebrate our national icon. Events were held all over the country. In a bid to escape the G8/G20 Chaos in Huntsville and Toronto, the family decided to head over to the event in Peterborough.

Unfortunately, heavy rain, slow traffic and a wailing child made the 1.5 hour drive seem like an endless oceanic flight. The Mrs. also seemed to have lost our camera when we visited the Toronto Zoo with our little man the day before...so no pics. Thankfully, Andre Cloutier and Alex Guthro posted some photos of the event on this thread on the WCHA forums.

When we finally arrived, the event was nearly ending but I got to catch up again with a few local members of the WCHA including Mike Ornsby who runs Reflections On The Outdoors Naturally blog. Got to see his new cedar canvas canoe built by Bruce Smith, a gorgeous solo boat with cherry gunwales and some walnut trim.

Also on hand were some vintage boats including a recently acquired 1919 Rice Lake Canoe with its quirky Aluminum Deck Plates. There's a thread about it on the WCHA forums here. Pulled a shot from the thread below:


1919 Rice Lake Canoe with Aluminum Decks
I was quickly introduced to Dick Persson of Headerwater Canoe fame who was caning some seats. Got to meet finally meet Terry McCaul, a volunteer with the CCM who was doing some paddle carving. Terry's paddles are also functional works of art, complete with gorgeous spined blades, cord whipped shafts, and laser engraved artwork. A shame that our lost camera was not on hand to take pics.

After returning back to the city, ended up reading that the wives of some G20 delegates were also introduced to some canoe culture as part of their Canadian experience. From this article in The Toronto Star:

"Eight of the first ladies spent the morning tucked away in a small, sparsely decorated hotel boardroom where they dined on chocolate canoe paddles and learned how to make nonedible canoe seats from a master craftsman."

(From L to R) Callista Mutharika (Malawi), Svetlana Medvedeva (Russia), Ban Soon-taek (UN), Laureen Harper (Canada), Nabuko Kan (Japan), Geertrui Van Rompuy (European Council) and Patience Goodluck Jonathan (Nigeria) sign on a canoe in Toronto on June 25, 2010.


Chocolate Paddle and pastry "canoe" served to the G8 wives.

Now that the latest Cherry paddle is complete, the pyrography stage has arrived. As mentioned in Part 1 of the post, the blade design was a replica of the c1849 Passamaquoddy paddle (Fig 72. Adney) currently in the collection of The Peabody Museum


Adney's sketch - Decorated Passamaquoddy on top


Peabody Museum paddle; Peabody Number 99-12-10/53655
My own Cherry version of this paddle decoration was based on a negative pyrography technique - burning the background at high heat to reveal the natural cherry tones in the scroll decoration. Cherry is an ideal wood for this technique and I was tempted to replicate the style again, but the I still vividly remember the huge amount of time needed to finish such a large piece with a tiny flow point tip. Plus, I wanted to get this paddle done in time for the National Canoe Day celebrations happening on June 26th in nearby Peterborough which I'm planning on attending (free admission to the Canadian Canoe Museum that day too!) Great way to get out of the city which is getting inconvenienced with the G8/G20 meetings downtown while also shutting down our cottage area up north this week.

It seemed fitting that since the blade shape was an identical twin, I should replicate this scroll pattern again, but this time a decision was made to try a a positive burning technique just to be a bit different. A hand-sketched image of this design drawn by Liz Reagan (which appears on page 20 of Graham Warren's book) shows the scroll pattern in a positive image technique. Given that the grip is a totally different design, I free handed some more scrolls to somewhat match the pattern the blade. This was completed easily over 2 days - a lot faster than the negative technique. Here are the shots before oiling:


Completed Decoration; Blade Closeup
As a bit of an extra decoration, ended up using about 3 feet of leather lace to tie a decorative Turk's Head knot at the base of the grip, below my name on the paddle. Here are some shots of the grip after oiling...


Turk's Head knot; Decorated Grip; Natural Side
The side with the inferior grain pattern was chosen for the pyrography decoration. The other side with some nice grain lines and patterns was left natural. Here are the pics of both sides...


Final Paddle
Can't wait to dip this sucker into some water and get paddling season underway!

Rich F maintains a website devoted to the film, Last of the Mohicans. Some of the behind-the-scenes photos from this epic picture include shots of decorated paddles used in the brief canoeing scenes.

The center paddler in this fiberglass war canoe replica has a brightly painted red beavertail with some added chevron stripes designs.


The stern paddler in this shot has another painted paddle with horizontal bands of color. Resting in the bow of the canoe in the foreground is the previously mentioned chevron decorated beavertail.


Apparently between takes, some of the crew were able to take the war canoes out for a spin. Here's a shot of them escaping with a piece of the set!


Also on the site is a blurry shot of the gunstock war club and paddle used by the character Chingachgook. Difficult to make out the details but the red bladed paddle seems to have an image of a snake crawling up the blade.


Chingachgook's War Club & a Canoe Paddle

Another Cherry paddle is in the works. This blank had been cut out the same time I had started the c.1849 Passamaquoddy replica (the paddle in the header of the site) and included the same blade shape. My intention was to make a set of matching paddles to go with the decorated canvas canoe. I had actually began working on the blade of this paddle first, but the reversing grain kept causing significant tearout and frustration with the spokeshave so I ended up leaving this blade incomplete and worked on the other one which had a superior grain pattern.

For this paddle, I had wanted to replicate the long, spined grip design of the Robin Egg Blue antique paddle posted on previously:


Maine Guide Paddle.
Circa 1910
However, after being cut out and the blade partially worked down, the paddle was left in the garage for many months and as a result, the blank revealed a significant twist resulting in misalignment between the grip and blade. In retrospect, I should've hung this blank but simply ran out of room on the rack. It was still completely salvageable, but the grip needed to be recarved to take out the twist and this necessitated redrawing of the center and other guidelines.


Twist in the blank; Redrawn grip top
All went well, and the while clamped to a picnic table near the communal fire pit, I worked down the grip and finished off the paddle over a weekend. Here are some shots during the process and a pic of the paddle after its first wetting in the lake to raise the grain.


Carving the spined grip; Frontal View (still needed some work)

Wetting the paddle to raise the grain
I was eager to take out this paddle for spin, as well as try out the Reshaped Birch Cree paddle. Both paddled very well, but I could see the thinned, lightweight Cree design being more suited to just light paddling use. The cherry paddle with its smooth, Maine Guide style grip was a real delight to use. I could see myself using this robust paddle for extended tripping given its comfortable design and balance.


Quick test on the water

UPDATE - JUNE 24: Paddle is now complete...see Part 2