The Making of a Cedar Dugout Canoe

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Leaving the two pie-shaped pieces at the ends (A and Bin Fig. 2) in place for now, stand on top of the log and sketch the angledin bow and stern sides on the surface, as shown in Fig. 3. Then-starting about an inch outside your lines (to make sure you'll have plenty of wood to work with)-cut those four corner pieces oft- with your chain saw. With that done, you can go back and remove the two pie-shaped pieces mentioned above, again allowing at least an extra inch outside your mark just to be safe. (Actually, when Tait and Carter were blocking out their canoe, they cut the four corners off before removing any wood above the sheer . . . but in retrospect, it seemed clear that chopping out the excess material above the sheer first would've made determining the correct bow and stern angles easier.) 

Next, sketch in the lower line of each stem on one side of the log (see Fig. 4) and since you want the stems to be as symmetrical as possible—make cardboard templates of the delineated areas and use them to transfer the lines to the opposite sides. Once you chain-saw the triangular sections off, your canoe will be completely blocked out.

ROUGH SHAPING

Now, you're ready to begin giving the vessel its basic contours. For this job, Earl and Norman used a double-bladed ax, a store-bought broad adz, and a homemade elbow adz (see the accompanying sidebar). If you lack experience with these instruments, take some time to practice using them on the chunks of wood you've already removed. Get a feel for the tools and for the way cedar in particular responds to them.

You can start shaping the canoe by hollowing out some of the hull's interior with your ax and/or chain saw. Don't cut very deep, though . . . the idea at this point is simply to remove enough excess wood to reduce the canoe's weight somewhat (which makes maneuvering the log a bit easier) and to allow the interior to begin drying uniformly (which helps to keep checks from developing).

Roll the log over so that one side is facing upward: The task at hand is to concentrate on shaping that one side only. Using your ax, broad adz, and elbow adz, work the wood a little at a time so that the desired contours gradually emerge from the cedar. The key here is to proceed very slowly, and—especially when you get close to achieving the shape you want—to make shallow cuts, perpendicular to the grain, so that you won't cut too deeply. This entire process, of course, is highly subjective . . . your only real guides are your own artistic instincts (and your scale model, if you made one). So work carefully-roughing out not only the curvature of the side, but also the stem ends—until you and your sense of design are satisfied with the end product.

At this point, you can begin to transfer the basic form you've created to the canoe's other side. Roll the log upside down onto blocks that are high enough to support the deck and keep the stems off the ground. Then strike a series of parallel lines—spaced about 8 to 10 inches apart—across the flat underside and perpendicular to the keel line (the exact longitudinal center of the canoe).

Now, make a simple measuring device by tying a nail to one end of a short length (about 14 inches) of string. Then hold the nail on any one of the parallel lines, at the point where that mark touches the side edge (where the bottom stops and the side begins) on the shaped half of the hull. Stretch the string along the line until it reaches the keel mark . . . hold the cord down at that point . . . swing the nail around to the other side . . . and—with the string pulled taut—an arc with the spike across the sketched line. By repeating this scribing process on all of the parallel lines, and then drawing a longitudinal line connecting these marked points of intersection-where each arc crosses its corresponding line-you'll establish the second side edge. On Tan's canoe, the distance between the two from beam to beam (in other words, the width of the base at its widest point) worked out to be 16 inches.

Tilt the canoe so that the unshaped side is facing skyward, and start contouring its surface . . . since you have an example to follow this time, you should be able to accomplish this fairly quickly. When you achieve what seems to be a rough mirror image of the opposite side, roll the vessel upside down again, eyeball your work to compare the slope of one "wall" to that of the other, and hew off any wood that is necessary to make the canoe's contours symmetrical.

Next, to make sure the vessel's curvature is uniform, first use your nail-and-string measure—and the parallel line/arc technique described earlier—to strike longitudinal lines on the hull that are 1, 6, and 12 inches from the keel. Any bulges in these lines will indicate where wood must be removed. 

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