Building a Bark Canoe

The building bed

Bark canoes were built without plans or molds, on a building bed: a level patch of ground, sometimes with a long board set flush into it to keep the bottom line true ¹. For the canoe’s bottom shape, many builders, including all Ojibwe builders, used a building frame: two thin cedar strips bent edgewise and spread by short crosspieces into the outline of the bottom ¹. In an Algonkin 2- to 2-1/2-fathom canoe Adney measured, the frame strips were 1-1/2 by 3/4 inch and the frame about 22-1/2 to 23 inches wide at the middle ¹.

The six stages

Adney’s sequence, from his drawings of the work ¹:

1. Frame and stakes: lay the frame (or the gunwale frame) on the bed and drive stakes around it to mark the outline; then pull them.
2. Lay the bark: lay the bark cover on the bed, outside up as the builder chooses, set the frame on it, weight it down, and turn the bark up along the sides.
3. Stake and sew: drive the stakes back into their holes to hold the bark upright. Sew on side panels where the main sheet is too narrow, using split spruce root through awl holes, and gore (slit and overlap) the bark where it bunches toward the ends.
4. Gunwales: set the gunwales on posts cut to the right heights to give the sheer, trim the bark to them, and lash it on; in many Algonkin and Ojibwe canoes the thwarts are fitted afterward, spreading the gunwales to add sheer and rocker.
5. Off the bed: lift the canoe onto horses to shape and sew the ends, fit the stem-pieces and headboards.
6. Ribs and gum: lay thin cedar sheathing splints inside, held by temporary ribs; drive the permanent ribs; then gum every seam.

Ribs and sheathing

Ribs are split from cedar, then bent in pairs while hot (or, in black spruce, while green) and dried to shape; Ojibwe builders pre-bent ribs in pairs and used spreaders in the end ribs while they dried ¹. Sheathing splints go in first, held by temporary ribs under the gunwales. The permanent ribs, a little long, are then driven into place under the gunwales, which pushes the sheathing and bark outward, stretches the cover tight, and sets the canoe’s final shape ¹.

Gumming

With the canoe upside down, every seam is gummed smooth on the outside ¹. The ends, from the start of the seam to above the waterline, get a heavy coat and a narrow strip of thin bark (in later years, gummed cloth) pressed over them ¹.

The gum is spruce gum, melted (traditionally in a bark container of boiling water, skimmed off the top) and tempered with a little animal fat and powdered charcoal. Test it on a strip of bark cooled in water: if it cracks when bent, add gum; if it’s tacky or rubs off, add temper ¹. Most groups’ gum was black or nearly so. Valliere uses pitch mixed with oak ash and deer tallow ².

Decoration, where it was used, was done by moistening the winter bark and scraping away the dark inner rind to leave a design ¹.

Try it

Make a small bark container the same way the canoe is built: a sheet of birch bark folded and gored at the corners, sewn with split spruce root through awl holes, rimmed with a split cedar hoop lashed on, and the seams sealed with pine pitch tempered with a little charcoal and fat. (The Green Woodworking course’s birch bark lesson covers containers in detail.)

What to take from this

A bark canoe is built on a level bed of earth: a building frame and stakes shape the bottom and sides, the bark is staked up, sewn with spruce root, and gored, the gunwales are lashed on at the right sheer, and the ends are shaped off the bed. Sheathing goes in, then cedar ribs bent in pairs are driven home to stretch the bark tight. Every seam is gummed with spruce gum tempered with fat and charcoal and tested by bending a gummed bark strip.