For the sake of convenience, I use electrical tools to cut the wood and synthetic fiber cloth as a skin and petroleum based paint to seal the skin so I don't really build an entirely off the grid boat. But I like to imagine that I could build a boat strictly from found materials in the manner that people of the Arctic once did. In a way, the Arctic before the arrival of the Europeans was very much like what a post-apocalyptic (PA) world would be like. No stores, no factories, no electricity. Everything you wanted you had to scrounge or barter for.
But a PA world would not look exactly like the pre-industrial Arctic. A PA world would have a lot of stuff from the industrial world still laying around like scrap metal, wire, plywood, tar and even ready to use hand-tools. A PA world would not be a stone age world necessarily. It would be a world that had very little new stuff in it. If you wanted new stuff, like a new kayak for instance, you or one of your friends would have to make it themselves.
Could I build a boat entirely from scrounged materials in a PA world? Probably. More than likely, if I wanted a boat with some cargo capacity, I would probably scavenge plywood, and make it out of that. I don't know what would be available in the way of sealers to keep the boat from leaking, but I could probably find something.
If I wanted to build a skin on frame kayak, that would be fairly easy. Plenty of construction lumber installed in buildings. I am assuming that I could get some hand saws. The hardest thing to find would be a suitable skin. I imagine myself scrounging tarps or awnings and sewing those together, again, assuming I could get a hold of some needles or maybe even make them from bone. If the tarps were plastic, they wouldn't need a sealer. If the tarps were not plastic, I would have to figure out a way to make them waterproof.
Hunting sea mammals for skins would be more or less out of the question. That would require more skill than I have. Even if I could manage to kill a sea lion hauled out on a beach by stealth, I would need four skins to cover a kayak. Getting four skins would be way too ambitious.
But how exactly did people of the Arctic build their kayaks in a pre-industrial world? We have some ideas but Europeans have been going to the Arctic since the 17th century and most of the kayaks now in museums were built with at least some access to steel tools and also possible to milled lumber.
The pictures below show what kayak building looked like in the transitionary period when people in the Arctic still built kayaks, but had industrially sourced tools and materials available to them. The kayak type being built here is Eastern Arctic, that is Canadian Arctic. These kayaks were long flat and stable and if you killed a seal, you transported the carcass on the wide back deck of the kayak.
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