How To Make A Dugout Canoe
If your post-apocalypse homestead is based around a large lake or river and its advantages, then having a boat is a very valuable tool. A dugout canoe fits the bill perfectly.
While researching dugout canoes I soon discovered a few things. Building a good one is not a trivial endeavor and there are many potential disasters that you must be aware to avoid.
Tree selection is the first decision and man oh man is it important. I guess it is possible to make a dugout canoe from any species of tree, however choosing the wrong tree can compromise the canoe's structure and effectiveness.
Commonly used trees are cottonwoods, pine, spruce, birch. The harder the wood the heavier the canoe will be and the harder it will be to cut, chisel or saw. Also the heavier the wood is the lower your canoe will sit in the water. Those are things to consider when selecting your tree.
Okay, so you have decided on a species of tree that you will use for your canoe. Now you have to find the actual tree to be worked! It is important that your canoe not be made of rotten wood. So finding a fallen tree should be avoided unless you know that the tree has fallen recently.
Size
It is going to take a sizable tree to make a canoe. The tree needs to be large enough in both length and diameter to the dimensions you plan on making. This means the tree cannot be too small obviously, but also consider that it shouldn't be wider than you want either.
Location
Consider the location of the tree. Ideally it will be near the water so you won't have to transport it a long way to get it into the water.
If your tree is standing alive or standing dead it will need to be taken down. If you don't have the tools to cut it down all is not lost. You can cut a tree without tools. How? With fire! The key here is that you will need to keep the fire small. The object is to burn a short section of the tree, but not get the fire so big that it burns higher up the tree than you want it to burn. So keep the fire small and keep the tree immediately above the fire wet. Putting mud on the tree where you don't want it to burn helps tremendously.
Once the tree is down the first step is to remove the bark. How you do this will depend on what tools you have. It can be done with anything from a rock to a hatchet, adze or a saw. However you do it, the bark needs to come off to prevent rot and bugs from destroying your canoe.
Decide on the length of the canoe and cut it to the proper length. Longer means more carrying capacity. A longer canoe also means heavier and more work to cut out too. Square-off the top and bottom of your log.
The process of forming the outside dimensions of the canoe comes before the hollowing out of the inside. Once you have the top cut flat take a piece of chard stick to more an outline of what the canoes width will be the entire length of its sides. You can now cut away all wood that falls outside of these lines.
Once that cutting is done, Step back and look at your log from the side. Again mark off a line that will be the bottom of your canoe. Most canoes have a bottom that sweeps upwards at the very front and back. This will help when beaching the boat so you don't have to always get out in the water when entering and exiting. But, be warned, if you over do the sweep then paddling your canoe will be a disaster.
Instead of moving you forward a canoe cut with the sweep running all the way from front to near center will result in the canoe wanting to turn with each paddle stroke. For this reason I prefer to sweep the front a lot more than the back of the canoe. The unswept back makes the canoe track better and also displaces more water so that it will provide more free-board and thus is able to transport more cargo.
Done? Great! That was a lot of work. At this stage you should have what looks like a canoe except it is full of wood and there are no rounded portions.
You must now get on with the chore of removing the wood from the inside of the canoe. Without tools this can be done with fire. I prefer tools for the bulk of this work. If using fire to hollow out your canoe you must keep the fire small. A large fire is going to cause the wood to crack and once you put out the fire you will likely discover that it has burned down in the cracks and thus burned much deeper than you thought.
So if you burn you will have to burn and put out the fire many times to verify you aren't burning too deeply. And as you get further and further into the process you will need to make the fire progressively smaller.
If fire is used as the sole means of hollowing out your canoe then the sides will need to be left thicker than can be made using hand tools.
Once you have the inside hollowed about a bit but far from completely. You need to flip it over. The only reason to do any of the hollowing so far is just to reduce the weight of the canoe so it can be flipped by mere mortals.
Next with the canoe flipped upside down, round off the curved portions of the canoe. Take care and work each side at the same time. This will allow you to keep each side symmetrical with the other. Your canoe needs to be as close to a mirror image of the opposing side as possible. So, get to work taking off the wood to round out the portions of the canoe that will result in a curved bottom where needed.
Once you are finished with this work the canoe will look exactly like the finished product while upside down.
Flip the canoe back over and start hollowing out the inside of the canoe even more. How thick should the walls of the canoe be when honed out with hand tools? Anywhere from an 1/2 inch to 1 inch thick. I would suggest hollowing out the entire canoe to a thickness of 1 inch or slightly more and then testing it in the water to see how it works. if it doesn't have enough free-board, then get to work thinning the walls more to lighten the load.
If the back of your canoe is wider than the front, you might notice the back rides much higher than the front. If this is the case then leaving the back of the canoe thicker walled than the front will help with that issue. Even if you designed your canoe to not have a front or a back, it is still a good idea to test the canoe and determine how it sits in the water and whittle away accordingly.
Once you have the canoe whittle down to the proper wall thickness and it rides nicely, Finish off the hull by sanding it smooth. Having a smooth hull will allow the canoe to slide through the water with less friction. You can use sandpaper from the store or you can make your own. You can also use shells or rock to use as sandpaper.
Coating the hull with a mixture of turpentine and pine tar will help preserve the wood. You want all this work to last as long as possible, right!
Tips: Calipers can be made to help determine the hull thickness. Get creative. There are all manner of methods you can dream up to make sure the hull is symmetrical.
Hull thickness: Thicker on bottom and thinner on the sides is common. This allows for some wear from dragging on the bottom and thick means less likely to leak.
You can't add wood back! Cut the sides lower to the water if needed only near the end of the project.
Leave the front of the boat unhollowed until the end. It will add strength to the front of the boat. Leave or remove as needed then.
While researching dugout canoes I soon discovered a few things. Building a good one is not a trivial endeavor and there are many potential disasters that you must be aware to avoid.
Tree selection is the first decision and man oh man is it important. I guess it is possible to make a dugout canoe from any species of tree, however choosing the wrong tree can compromise the canoe's structure and effectiveness.
Okay, so you have decided on a species of tree that you will use for your canoe. Now you have to find the actual tree to be worked! It is important that your canoe not be made of rotten wood. So finding a fallen tree should be avoided unless you know that the tree has fallen recently.
It is going to take a sizable tree to make a canoe. The tree needs to be large enough in both length and diameter to the dimensions you plan on making. This means the tree cannot be too small obviously, but also consider that it shouldn't be wider than you want either.
Location
Consider the location of the tree. Ideally it will be near the water so you won't have to transport it a long way to get it into the water.
If your tree is standing alive or standing dead it will need to be taken down. If you don't have the tools to cut it down all is not lost. You can cut a tree without tools. How? With fire! The key here is that you will need to keep the fire small. The object is to burn a short section of the tree, but not get the fire so big that it burns higher up the tree than you want it to burn. So keep the fire small and keep the tree immediately above the fire wet. Putting mud on the tree where you don't want it to burn helps tremendously.
Once the tree is down the first step is to remove the bark. How you do this will depend on what tools you have. It can be done with anything from a rock to a hatchet, adze or a saw. However you do it, the bark needs to come off to prevent rot and bugs from destroying your canoe.
Decide on the length of the canoe and cut it to the proper length. Longer means more carrying capacity. A longer canoe also means heavier and more work to cut out too. Square-off the top and bottom of your log.
The process of forming the outside dimensions of the canoe comes before the hollowing out of the inside. Once you have the top cut flat take a piece of chard stick to more an outline of what the canoes width will be the entire length of its sides. You can now cut away all wood that falls outside of these lines.
Once that cutting is done, Step back and look at your log from the side. Again mark off a line that will be the bottom of your canoe. Most canoes have a bottom that sweeps upwards at the very front and back. This will help when beaching the boat so you don't have to always get out in the water when entering and exiting. But, be warned, if you over do the sweep then paddling your canoe will be a disaster.
Instead of moving you forward a canoe cut with the sweep running all the way from front to near center will result in the canoe wanting to turn with each paddle stroke. For this reason I prefer to sweep the front a lot more than the back of the canoe. The unswept back makes the canoe track better and also displaces more water so that it will provide more free-board and thus is able to transport more cargo.
Done? Great! That was a lot of work. At this stage you should have what looks like a canoe except it is full of wood and there are no rounded portions.
You must now get on with the chore of removing the wood from the inside of the canoe. Without tools this can be done with fire. I prefer tools for the bulk of this work. If using fire to hollow out your canoe you must keep the fire small. A large fire is going to cause the wood to crack and once you put out the fire you will likely discover that it has burned down in the cracks and thus burned much deeper than you thought.
So if you burn you will have to burn and put out the fire many times to verify you aren't burning too deeply. And as you get further and further into the process you will need to make the fire progressively smaller.
If fire is used as the sole means of hollowing out your canoe then the sides will need to be left thicker than can be made using hand tools.
Once you have the inside hollowed about a bit but far from completely. You need to flip it over. The only reason to do any of the hollowing so far is just to reduce the weight of the canoe so it can be flipped by mere mortals.
Next with the canoe flipped upside down, round off the curved portions of the canoe. Take care and work each side at the same time. This will allow you to keep each side symmetrical with the other. Your canoe needs to be as close to a mirror image of the opposing side as possible. So, get to work taking off the wood to round out the portions of the canoe that will result in a curved bottom where needed.
Once you are finished with this work the canoe will look exactly like the finished product while upside down.
Flip the canoe back over and start hollowing out the inside of the canoe even more. How thick should the walls of the canoe be when honed out with hand tools? Anywhere from an 1/2 inch to 1 inch thick. I would suggest hollowing out the entire canoe to a thickness of 1 inch or slightly more and then testing it in the water to see how it works. if it doesn't have enough free-board, then get to work thinning the walls more to lighten the load.
If the back of your canoe is wider than the front, you might notice the back rides much higher than the front. If this is the case then leaving the back of the canoe thicker walled than the front will help with that issue. Even if you designed your canoe to not have a front or a back, it is still a good idea to test the canoe and determine how it sits in the water and whittle away accordingly.
Once you have the canoe whittle down to the proper wall thickness and it rides nicely, Finish off the hull by sanding it smooth. Having a smooth hull will allow the canoe to slide through the water with less friction. You can use sandpaper from the store or you can make your own. You can also use shells or rock to use as sandpaper.
Coating the hull with a mixture of turpentine and pine tar will help preserve the wood. You want all this work to last as long as possible, right!
Tips: Calipers can be made to help determine the hull thickness. Get creative. There are all manner of methods you can dream up to make sure the hull is symmetrical.
Hull thickness: Thicker on bottom and thinner on the sides is common. This allows for some wear from dragging on the bottom and thick means less likely to leak.
You can't add wood back! Cut the sides lower to the water if needed only near the end of the project.
Leave the front of the boat unhollowed until the end. It will add strength to the front of the boat. Leave or remove as needed then.
