Phase 02 — Stone, bone, wood and fibre toolkit / About year 1

Dugout canoe and paddles ⚠

explores the 100-mile coast

MakingYear 1Story day 38Stands on 16 earlier

AWhat it needs

Needs 16 other products in all, 4 of them directly.

View

02.26 Dugout canoe and paddles ⚠Making Year 1 needs 16 products
- 01.08 First fire and stone hearthMaking Year 1 needs 5 products
  - 01.06 Tinder and kindling storeMaking Year 1 raw materials only
  - 01.07 Bow-drill fire setMaking Year 1 needs 3 products
    - 01.03 Sharp stone flakeMaking Year 1 needs 1 product
      - 01.02 HammerstoneMaking Year 1 raw materials only
    - 01.05 Twisted plant-fibre cordMaking Year 1 needs 2 products
      - 01.03 Sharp stone flakeshown above ↑← shown at left
- 02.08 Hafted stone axe ⚠Making Year 1 needs 13 products
  - 02.05 Pitch glueMaking Year 1 needs 6 products
    - 01.08 First fire and stone hearthshown above ↑← shown at left
  - 02.06 Sinew thread and rawhide lashingMaking Year 1 needs 9 products
    - 01.15 Fire-hardened spear ⚠Making Year 1 needs 6 products
      - 01.03 Sharp stone flakeshown above ↑← shown at left
      - 01.08 First fire and stone hearthshown above ↑← shown at left
    - 02.03 Stone knives, scrapers and engraving pointsMaking Year 1 needs 3 products
      - 02.01 Knapping kitMaking Year 1 needs 2 products
        01.02 Hammerstoneshown above ↑← shown at left
        01.03 Sharp stone flakeshown above ↑← shown at left
  - 02.07 Ground stone axe headMaking Year 1 needs 2 products
    - 01.02 Hammerstoneshown above ↑← shown at left
    - 02.04 Sandstone grinding slabMaking Year 1 needs 1 product
      - 01.02 Hammerstoneshown above ↑← shown at left
- 02.09 Stone adzeMaking Year 1 needs 13 products
- 02.11 Three-strand ropeMaking Year 1 needs 3 products
  - 01.05 Twisted plant-fibre cordshown above ↑← shown at left

Open a box to see what it needs. A dashed box is a product already drawn in full: click it to jump there. In the org chart, drag to move around.

BWhy

The island is a hundred miles long. On foot, through forest, its far end is a fortnight away. By water it is a few days. A canoe also reaches fishing grounds beyond the rocks, and carries loads no one could carry on their back.

CYou need

A straight, sound tree of light wood that resists rot: cedar, tulip tree, cottonwood or lime. As thick as a person's chest is high when it lies on the ground, and four body lengths long.
Stone axes (02.08), adzes (02.09), fire (01.08) and wet clay
Rope (02.11), poles, and two light logs for the float
Split boards for paddles

DSteps

Fell the tree with fire and axe together. Pack a collar of wet clay round the trunk at knee height. Burn a ring below the clay with a small fire, chop out the char, and burn again. It takes a day.
Cut it to length the same way. Roll it to the water on rollers and float it. Mark the side that floats uppermost: that is the top. The heavy side becomes the bottom.
Haul it out and prop it level, top side up. Adze the top flat along its whole length.
Shape the outside first: a long tapering bow, a shorter stern, a slightly flattened bottom.
Hollow it with fire, exactly as for a trough. Lay wet clay along both edges of the flat top to protect the sides. Burn, chop out the char with adzes, and burn again. Work from both ends toward the middle.
Leave the sides two fingers thick and the bottom three. Check often by tapping and by feeling with a hand inside and a hand outside. Leave the bow and stern solid for a forearm.
Leave two ridges of wood across the inside as you go, or lash in two poles later, to keep the sides from springing in. They are also the seats.
Scrape the inside clean. Rub the whole hull with fat, and keep it shaded and damp until launch, so that it does not crack.
A round log rolls over in the sea. Fit a float: lash two poles across the canoe, reaching out a body length to one side, and lash a light pointed log under their ends, lying parallel to the hull. Use rope, and tighten every lashing wet.
Paddles: adze a split board to a blade a hand-span wide and a forearm long, on a shaft that reaches from the ground to the chin. Make one for each person and a spare.
Test it loaded, in water no deeper than the waist, before anyone takes it past the rocks.

EIt worked if

With three people and their own weight again in cargo, a hand-span of side still shows above the water.
A person can climb in from deep water without turning it over.

FWhat goes wrong

It cracks along the grain. It dried in the sun. Keep it wet and greased; fill a crack with pitch or bitumen and lash across it.
The fire burns through the side. The clay dried. Assign one person to nothing but watching the clay.
It lists to one side. More wood was left on that side. Adze it out and try again.
It rolls over. No float, or the float is too close. Set it further out.

GSafety

Nobody goes out alone, and nobody goes beyond swimming distance of the shore until the canoe has been turned over and righted on purpose, in the shallows, by its own crew.
Tie the paddles and the bailer to the hull.

HIn the story

For Tane this is not a boat. It is the proof that the sea is a road, as it was for his ancestors. He works on it from first light, and sleeps beside it. Bjorn, who has built boats from sawn planks all his life, learns to build one with fire, and says it is the best work he has done. On the thirty-eighth day it floats level, and Tane paddles it out past the rocks alone, against his own rule. Adam says nothing. He is waiting on the beach when Tane comes back.

IFigures

not drawn yet

Fig. 02.26-aThe canoe from above, from the side and in section: hull, the two cross ridges, the float on its two poles, with wall and bottom thicknesses marked.diagram

not drawn yet

Fig. 02.26-bThe log propped on the beach, coals glowing along its top between ridges of wet clay, two people chopping out char with adzes.making

not drawn yet

Fig. 02.26-cThe finished canoe with its float, three paddlers, crossing clear water with the shore behind.use