dug out canoe

[jamie]

no seats, kneel. better bouancy . 10-14' is about what we do. gonna need enough clay for the initial fire so probably 4 5 gallon buckets. and then some to protect the thin areas.

[stickbender]

JTurner;
google Seminole dugout canoe, and go to the "Seminole Indians with dugout canoes, in Everglades National park, 1921.  It shows the style, they made.  You can see how wide they are, and how many people it held, and the bow and stern style.  Personally, I would go at least 15' or more.  Is this just going to be for you?  Are you planning on putting stuff in it?
Some of the Creek style dugouts, had cross sections that were left in to strengthen the sides.  They were sort of seats, not that wide .  They were just a section or two, that spanned the width of the canoe, and were lower than the sides, and somewhat " U " shaped.  Do you have any marsh areas where you live?  You could use it on a hill, in the snow......   Traditionally, these were poled, but they also had some long paddles, they used while standing.  Sort of like the African natives in their log canoes.  If you use a pole, I might suggest that you use a forked end, or make a hinged " Y " section at the end.  That way you don't sink in the mud so much, and when you pull the pole up, the " Y " end closes, so as not to create much drag in the water.  Also go to State Library,and Archives of Florida.  They have excellent pictures, of dugouts, and the various styles, and different freeboard heights.  You can get some great ideas on how they were made.   Hope this helps.  And good luck.  You can cut to length, the log, and then flatten one side for the bottom, and shape it, and and turn it over, and flatten the top, and start to hollow it.  Look at the pictures, they have a lot of pictures, that show basically how they were made.  The poles were a combination of push pole, with a paddle blade.  Take lots of pictures.

                                                                               Wayne

[jcinpc]

heres a few pics of some of my shell artifactsI find here in Florida.  These are shell  wood cutting tools, They used the busycon shell for the manufactor of the adze.. 1 style would be the whole shell with a notch cut out for the stick to haft and the columnella beveled and the other is the adze cut off the wall of the shell and the bit ground to an angle. Florida has the most aboriginal watercraft found anywhere in the world. A few years back in Newnans lake in Gainesvill during a drought the archs found, after they were alerted, over 80 canoes on 1 end of the lake, archiac to mississipian periods. Very interesting the different styles made.

[jturner]

Thanks guys ive been lookin into this and keep comin up with more questions. Will the heat from burning it out keep it from checking all the way threw or what do i have to do to keep it from spliting? I am cutting it down this week but dont want it to split on me    should i paint the ends? If it does split clear threw can i seal it with pine pitch or how do i seal it?

[jamie]

its gonna check no matter what. even large splits can be fixed with bark and pitch. if you can get cedar bark it makes a great hole filler then cover it in pitch. inner bark from other trees works well too.

[JW_Halverson]

The Lewis and Clark Trail museum in Washburn, ND has a dugout canoe made from a monster old growth cottonwood tree.  It was partially roughed out with chainsaws but then was finished with adzes and axes.  It was all done with local volunteer labor, so they may be able to give you some pointers. You may want to contact them for further information, 1-877-462-8535.

I have heard of running a shallow chainsaw cut down the length of a log to control splitting and checking.  If you float the log and mark the lighter side, I would imagine a saw cut along that upper side would be your best bet.  And from experience, if you are going to carve cottonwood, do it when it is green, the stuff is pretty ornery when it dries.  An axe bites into cottonwood pretty well when green, but for some reason it just rejects the cutting edge when it is dry. 

Oh, and if you gotta use it for firewood, cut down the tree at -40F, and split it while it is still -40F, otherwise you will never get it split!  I once heard an old timer say he would rather burn his last axe handle in the stove than have to split another stick of cottonwood.  Another case of OLD=SMART

[david w.]

cool topic. I'd like to do this someday

[wildman]

I got a place on the ohio river eyeballed a big drift log all summer with the intention just never could stop shootin fish long enuff . I wish you all the luck post lots of pics

[jturner]

just got a new camera and computer. gonna try to knock the beast down this week, have pics up as i go.

[swamp monkey]

I made one of these during the Lewis and Clark bicentennial and it was work but fun.  A few things I learned.  burning does not speed things up with cottonwood.  It holds too much moisture.  If you let it dry it will crack so bad you can trow a cat through the gaps.  work it wet and keep it that way.  Resinous conifers make great use of burning out.  We used axes, but an adze was worth its weight in gold.  We left the bottom thicker than the sides to it was sure to stay afloat with the right side pointing up. You can drill on pilot hole in the bottom to gauge thickness.  Plug it with a stick when you reach your desired thickness.  Sides we eyeballed. 

[Terrible_Savage]

howdy yall, I grew up all over rural africa, i collected spears, bows and arrows. dugout canoes were always cool. inland like the swamps of zambia the canoes tend to be delicate looking, almost too thin without a re enforced brim but really long and wide, nice for a day fishing.
On the east coast in north mozambique the canoes were narrower and not as long but thicker and strongly re enforced brim. mine had a sail that was taller than the canoe was long and outriggers on both sides. it had a really sharp keel like a v with the bottom flattened out so when i took the outriggers off to see it tipped over under it's own weight.
 It was about 14 ft i think, looking in my mind's eye, high nose for the waves and that is what I learned to sail on. I miss that life! I'll have some pics somewhere, if I find them I'll post one if yall like.

The fishermen would paint their boats sometimes but there was no oil or anything. I used one the seemed to have been parked on a white ant nest it had a lot of little fountains in the bottom. it was made from a mangrove tree and short. that one came from an island quite far and i'm not surprised it never went back to the island!

there was one kind of dugout that fascinated me. it was short, about +-6 ft i think. the shape was a lot like an airplane wing cross section. the nose widening fast, the one person two ft back, the remaining four or 5 ft tapered slowly up out of the water and rapidly became so small and light you could not sit farther back than that two ft from the front. you seldom saw them on the beach they were light enough to be carried back to the hut but you would frequently see them out of sight of land in the ocean waves. they would catch marlin, sailfish and tuna from those little hollow branches. using a builder's line with a hook they'd hook a fish with the line over a groove leading over the nose, hang on that line with it wrapped around a stick and lean back. thing about catching a fish longer than your boat is it takes a while to tire him! that's why you'd see them out at sea. i don't have a pic of that kind unfortunately. if yall have any questions ask and I'll try remember.

[stickbender]

     Cool!  I don't think I would want to hook a marlin, while in a little five to six foot canoe, that tapered like that!  I would be afraid the sharks would be all over the marlin and then all around the little canoe, and just one bump, and you're the hors d'oeuvre! 
Some of the pictures of the Seminoles in their dug out canoes, were amazing.  They would park their whole family, and dog in those things, and there would only be an inch or two of freeboard, and the Man standing in the back, poling.  Not the kind of transportation I would want to be doing with 12 foot or more gators quite common back then.   Definitely try to find pictures.  Thanks.

                                                                       Wayne

[iowabow]

i do ceramics and always need to know the thickness of a bowl so that I don't trim the bottom out. I do this calculation in the follow way, lay board across the sides measure to the bottom and record measurement. Then place another board under the boat make sure the distance is the same on both sides and record the measurement. Now the difference is the thickness

[Sparrow]

 Terrible savage. I would like to see that photo. Iowabow that is the way. Funny how simple can so easy be ignored by our otherwise razor sharp minds. (I think the last time my mind was "razor sharp" was in the early nineties)  '  Frank

[JackCrafty]

Very interested to see what happends with this...