Eastern Arctic Kayak - Historical Construction Photos

I have some historical photos of Eastern Arctic kayak construction.  I have no idea where I got them.  But here they are.  Mostly what I want to comment on is the fact that while these photos don't reveal all that much, they do reveal some general specifics about Arctic kayak construction methodology.
The most important revelation to me is that these boats were built without the benefit of any sort of building platform other than what looks like pretty bumpy ground.  What this means is that in order to get a symmetrical boat, the builders had to rely on the parts of the boat itself to achieve symmetry.  The deck, once built became the building platform for the rest of the boat.

This boat frame appears to be almost done.  The builder appears to be doing some trimming with a hand saw, or maybe he is just using the deck of the kayak for a saw horse to cut a piece of wood.

Meanwhile, a little earlier in the building process, this builder has inserted some rib blanks into their mortises.  Bending and trimming the ribs remains to be done. 

Women are covering a finished frame in canvas.  It looks as though they will have some canvas left over.  The fact that they are using canvas indicates that this photo was taken very near the end of the era of kayak construction.  And the building site is remarkable for its ruggedness.  No nicely swept floor, strictly open air.

What Killed the Kayak? Aleut Version - Akutan, Alaska

Akutan, Alaska is an island in the Aleutians and once a place where people paddled kayaks as a part of making a living.  Nowadays the biggest industry on the island is a fish processing plant.  Trawlers scrape the bottom of the ocean for fish and bring them to the processing plant to have them turned into product suitable for sale in the lower 48. The Aleut population of the island actually has very little to do with the fish plant other than extracting rent from them.  Still, the kayak as a tool for hunting, fishing and whaling is no longer in use.

The fish plant at Akutan.
Photo courtesy of Kurt Schmidt

The big  rusty things are doors on a trawl. Picture a net like a large sock with one of these doors on either side sliding along the bottom and funneling fish into the sock.  Nothing escapes.
Human added for scale.

Iron weights hold the bottom of the net close to the bottom of the ocean.

Nets.

Nets.

Bye, bye Akutan Kayaks.

What Killed the Kayak? Aleut Version - Sand Point, AK

Sand Point, Alaska is home to one of the larger fishing fleets in the Aleutians.  The pictures below show the boats which have replaced the kayaks of the Unangan (Aleut) hunters.

Good bye, kayaks.

What Killed the Kayak? Hudson Strait Version

Down in the lower left corner you can see what appears to be a rowboat.  Someone standing in a rowboat is looking on at the starting line of a kayak race about to start at Port Burwell. 
In hindsight, it is easy to see that the end of the Eastern Arctic kayak is not far away.  Once you put an outboard motor on a small skiff, the kayak becomes obsolete.  Everything you can do from a kayak, travel, hunt, fish, you can do more easily from a motorized skiff.  But it is really the motor on the skiff that killed the kayak, a skiff without a motor is no match for a kayak, but a skiff with a motor and a hunter with a rifle makes the kayak an antiquated novelty.

Eastern Arctic Kayaks - Hudson Strait

Here's a bunch of pictures of Hudson Strait kayaks.  They came to me by way of Bill Samson, I believe.  They are labeled something like Burwell1, Burwell2. Wikipedia has some info on Burwell Here.
These kayaks are among the longest kayaks ever made.  Why they were made the way they were made is probably a matter of evolution in response to local conditions.

This photo is called, "going ashore at Port Burwell."  Looks like plenty of ice in winter.  Apparently kayaking here was a summer activity.

Caption: "Port Burwell, 1919." Looks like a sheltered Fjord suitable for the paddling of flat bottomed kayaks.

Wow, look at that nose.  Overhang on these things was up to 4 feet.  So if the boat was 22 foot long, length on the water was more like 18 feet.  The long overhang appears to have about as much function as fins on a Cadillac, but I suspect that it actually is a useful way to get a flat bottomed boat over a wave without undue pounding. Also note the long paddle.  Looks to be about ten feet long with narrow blades, 3 inches max, maybe less.

One more time a little more from the side.

And here they are racing.  The paddlers are generating a good deal of froth like they would at the starting line.  Note the paddler farthest right with his high angle of attack on his paddle.  For normal cruising, the paddles were supposedly held much lower down, even balanced on the foredeck to spare the paddler's arms.

Flat-Bottomed Kayaks of the Eastern Arctic

I am about to launch off on construction of a flat bottomed kayak of the Eastern Arctic type.  Since I know nothing about these kayaks, I don't know what to expect.  Supposedly they are reasonably fast in spite of their flat bottoms.  The big plus of these kayaks would be their stability.  We'll see.

Eugene Arima has an article on this boat type HERE from which the illustration above was excerpted. The U of Alaska Press also has a book out on the kayaks of the Eastern Arctic. 
I also just paid ten bucks to get a manual from David Zimmerly on this type of kayak.
Zimmerly also has a reprint of his article in Sea Kayaker Magazine available.
And Harvey Golden has created a replica of the type of boat.
More to come.

Yurt Design - Canvas Shrinkage

Canvas shrinks.  I knew that. So when I designed the roof pattern for the yurt, I should have allowed for shrinkage but didn't.  Oh well, nothing that can't be fixed with a little more sewing.
Not only didn't I allow for shrinkage in the roof, I also didn't realize that the canvas shrinks unevenly, more along the length of the material than across it.  Something to be conscious of next time.
Now that I think of it,  I doubt that I could plan for shrinkage in any sort of exact way since the shrinkage is non-isotropic.  I suppose I could just make a roof cover uniformly oversize, then when it shrinks, regardless of whether it does it evenly or not, it would still be large enough to do the job.
For now, not having tried to it yet, I am leaning toward pre-shrinking the canvas.  Unroll however much canvas I need, hose it down, dry it in the sun, then cut it up and sew it into whatever shape I need. Everything I haven't tried yet sounds like a good idea.  Whether it actually is, doing it will tell.
Meanwhile, some before and after shrunken roof cover pictures.

Before: the yurt roof cover on its maiden voyage in Kings Canyon National Park. I trimmed the fabric so there would be about 8 inches of overhang.  Sewing the seam at the edge reduced that by about an inch.  Other than the wrinkles which I hadn't dealt with yet, not bad.

After: Overhang of the roof fabric has been reduced to about 4 inches at the max and two inches at the minimum.  The wall fabric likewise has shrunk some top to bottom and side to side. Time to make some corrections. Canvas work is not an exact science.

Baidarka Chair

What do you do with an old baidarka (kayak) once it starts falling apart?  Why you make a chair out of it.
I don't know the details behind this picture other than that it came to me from people living in or once living in the Aleutians. I won't mention their names just in case they would rather not be named. On the other hand, if they feel like they would like to be named, I would be glad to name them.
The question here is whether making a chair out of a baidarka is considered creative re-use or an act of vandalism, or worse yet, sacrilegious destruction of a valuable cultural artifact.  Who knows.  Probably the kayak was falling apart and someone did some creative re-use.
Regardless of what is going on here, let's try to identify some baidarka parts that might have gone into this chair. The skinny rods that form the back look like hull stringers.  The larger upright pieces of wood that form the sides of the back look like sections of the stern parts of gunwales.  The rest of the pieces are hard to identify other than that they might be deck beams.  And the seat looks like a piece of kayak skin. 
Rock on.

Wood and Canvas Canoe Restoration - Impending

I am about to launch into another wood and canvas canoe restoration, assuming the owner is willing to spend the money.  A new one of these kinds of canoes is about $4000, so anything less than $2000 for a restoration is probably a good deal.  Perhaps you would pay more if the boat was an heirloom and you have some emotional connection with it.
This boat looks like a good candidate.  The hull is in fairly good shape. It needs some varnish stripping, some new planking, new skin, paint, interior varnish, outwales, gunwale caps, thwarts and seat restoration and seat hardware. And after all that was replaced or fixed, the boat would once again look spiffy. And of course it would have that old-timey wood, paint and brass, handmade look.

The canoe minus its canvas skin.  Planking is white cedar over white cedar ribs.

A view of the top of the canoe, partially decked in mahogany.

Interior view showing ribs and assortment of rotted wood trim. 

Closeup on the rotted trim.  The curved piece at the top left is one of the exterior stems.

Yurt Report - Wind Test

Two nights ago, the yurt underwent a spontaneous wind test.  A front with wind gusts up to 50mph moved through the area.  The bushes and trees were rattling against the fences and roofs and making a spectacular amount of noise.  And then I realized that I had recently skinned up the yurt.  It had survived the previous winter without problems but that was as a bare frame.  With the skin on, the wind would be able to exert more pressure on it.  I was tempted to drive out to the shop and check the yurt right away but decided to wait till morning to assess the damage if any.

Next morning I drove to the shop.  The first thing I saw was the flag down on the ground.  This wasn't a good sign. 

I went to the back of the shop with some trepidation but there was the yurt, still standing, albeit with the roof cover partly blown off.  This was no big deal since I had not sewn the final seam and the cover had a tendency to get blown off even in a light wind.

A few of the roof poles had also lost their moorings and fallen to the ground. I suspect what happened that made the poles fall down was that the flexing of the wall in the wind distorted the round shape of the walls into an oval, popping off the tension band and allowing the top of the wall to bow out to where the roof poles were able to pull loose.

The tension band, the green rope, is inside the wall instead of outside, apparently just rolled over the top of the wall.

Putting the yurt back together took maybe 15 minutes. So the test was useful, revealed some more of how the yurt works.  I already knew that the wall was a little too flexible.  Now I knew another reason why it should be a little stiffer, to not distort in a strong wind and allow the roof poles to come loose.  Also the roof covering needs better tiedowns, something I just hadn't bothered with yet.

Oh, and I untangled the flag and got it back to the top of the pole.

Yurt report - a new stove

The fire in the yurt test went well as reported in my previous post, but the guys at the shop were put off by the burnt potato smell left behind by the fire.  I told them that I would be getting a stove, but shopmate Tim said that we could make one on our own. I told Tim that he could because I don't know how to make a stove from scratch. Tim, said, let's go and off we went.  Chris, another guy at the shop donated a propane tank as the shell for the stove.  Progress so far documented below.

Tim cutting an opening for the door of the wood stove. Before we got to this point we had to vent the tank to let remaining propane escape, torque off the valves and flush the tank out with water to force all the propane out. Tim did the cutting with the tank filled with water.

Les is grinding away tack welds he put on to hold the door in place while he welded on the hinge for the door at the left.  Legs are already welded on.  Legs were cut from scrap angle iron.  It's good to have scrap laying around and neighbors who can weld.

And there it is, a small stove that looks like a bulldog.  Still remaining to be fabricated, a latch for the door and a hole cut in the rear and a flange for attaching stove pipe.

Yurt Report - Fire Test

Another update on the yurt.  As my shop mate Tim said, I liked it better when you were building boats.  Still, yurts is what you get for now.  This report is on the fire test, that is, on a test of whether I could build a fire in the yurt without choking on the smoke. 
But first, some outside views of the sixteen foot yurt with a skin on it.  This skin consists of big plastic banners that have done their duty.  They consist of a fabric substrate that is then coated with some sort of plastic.  On this, the graphic is printed. And when the date for the advertisement expires, they are tossed or handed off to some recycler. I got these from my friend Tim who got them from a neighbor. So yes, they're  recycled.

I don't know why, but this particular skin gives the yurt a decided third world look.  Maybe it's the ragged edge on the roof and the dirt on the white banner and the advertisement on the outside.  Looks like a place where you could buy used motor oil.

With just the white wall showing, the place looks a little more dignified.  Ropes that hold the roof and the wall in place courtesy of a friend who sold his sailboat.  Also ropes abandoned by fishing boats and washed ashore at Point Reyes National Seashore.

As I said, this is a test, the 16 foot yurt being a prototype for all aspects of the yurt technology. So far the test of the banners as a covering material has gone on for about a year.  I have already been using the banners as a cover for my kayaks.  What I found out is that the plastic deteriorates within a year, probably at the same rate as those ubiquitous blue tarps sold everywhere.   So I would probably use these plastic sheets only for temporary installations.  The amount of work to do a good job on covers isn't worth it given the short life of this stuff.  Still, for prototyping, they are just fine.  Beside the short lifetime of the banners, another major shortcoming is that they are heavy and stiff, especially in cold weather and getting them installed is quite a chore, especially for the roof.  The walls are not a problem.  There the stiffness is an asset. Plus you have to not be put off by whatever commercial message is printed on the banners. 
And now for the fire test.

The fire in progress with a bucket of water standing by just in case.

Here it is, the fire.  While the fire got going the yurt filled up with a good deal of smoke because the fire wasn't creating enough heat to generate a good updraft that would pull the smoke out of the smoke hole.  But once it burned nice and hot, the smoke was minimal, but that was with the door open.  I will have to do more testing, but I would say that with the door closed, you wouldn't really want a fire inside.  But then, having a fire would hardly be of much benefit. 
Also, this yurt is quite tall with 64 inch high walls and the smoke hole at about 10 feet elevation.  So this is a fair size space to dissipate the smoke. So for now, recommendations are, keep the sticks small to minimize smoke.  Get the fire going good and hot before you invite anyone inside the yurt, ideally, you would build up a good bed of embers first so any new wood on the fire would burn quickly without a lot of smoke.
Or get a stove. I ordered one and will report on that soon as I get it.

Shortly after sunset with some color remaining in the sky and the San Francisco skyline in the background and the tail end of Alameda in the foreground just past the yurt. 

Pretty much the same shot as the one before but with the sky just a bit darker and the yurt lit up just a little more. Either I stoked the fire or the sky got darker and the camera gave the whole picture a little more exposure.  In any case, the yurt is positively glowing.

A Tale of Bears, Beers and Anglers

The Kings River, our destination at the end of a two mile hike downhill.

One day while camping, we found a trail that goes down to the Kings River.  Not that you have to hike down to the river necessarily.  There are places where you can drive right along the river.  But we were looking for some exercise and diversion from sitting at our campsite and so we hiked the trail from the paved road down to the river, a distance of about two miles of switchbacks that drops you down 1000 feet to the river below. The trail is just wide enough for one person, no walking side by side.  Who created the trail we don't know. It probably precedes the creation of Kings Canyon National Park, but there it is. 

At the trail head, our car was the only one there, so we had the trail all to ourselves.  A sign posted at the trail head informed us that the portion of river accessed by the trail supports native trout and that catch and release was the only form of fishing allowed.  So apparently, this trail is commonly used by fisher people. I don't know how many hikers use it since once you hike downhill for two miles you have to hike back up two miles.

So we hiked down to the bottom of the river and had a lunch of crackers and hard boiled eggs.  I was musing that it would be nice to also have a bottle of wine.  It's nice to drink wine in a beautiful place, but experience has taught me that once you've drunk a bottle of wine, even with the help of others, hiking becomes much harder since your legs feel like lead and are much harder to lift than when you haven't been drinking.

After our little lunch, I did some exploring around the next bend of the river and tucked in next to a large boulder was a pile of litter spilling out of a plastic cooler.  The litter consisted mostly of aluminum beer and soda cans, some empty plastic chip bags and some plastic catsup and mustard bottles with chew marks on them.  My guess was that the chew marks had been made by a bear who had gotten into the cooler and rummaged through the contents. And when I rummaged around the cans myself, I found six of them unopened, four Buds and two Bud Lites. The bear apparently did not have a taste for beer.  I looked around for a way to carry the beers back with me and found a discarded tee shirt which I turned into a tote bag.  

Aside from being pleased to have found some beer, I was also wondering why people would drag heavy coolers full of beer and sodas two miles downhill on a narrow trail.  Apparently it was enough of an ordeal to dissuade them from carrying the empties back.  Or maybe they thought they could leave their stuff down by the river and come back another time and drink or eat what was left over.  Who knows?

Later, we ran into some more abandoned litter, one stash was a plastic tub full of clothes - 4 pairs of jeans, some sweat shirts two pairs of sneakers and an assortment of tee shirts and a disintegrating pair of waders. Was someone planning on living down at the bottom of the hill?  Again, who knows?  by the looks of it, the tub of clothes had also been searched by a bear. 

The Buds cooling in the river.  I had two and Joan opened one but didn't finish it. 

Knowing the ill effects of too much beer, we left the remaining cans for the next hiker.

On our way out, we spotted another cooler stashed a little ways up the hill next to a tree.  Seems like the bears hadn't found this one yet.

Another camping spot next to the river, obviously a site for many a cookout.

Canned food seems to be the preference on the Kings River. Skeletons of many cans remain in the ashes.

Assorted kitchen implements generously left behind for the next person.

And a few essentials, also unopened and left behind for the next visitor.

So on to some possible morals of this story. Zero or more options may be true. You may be able to think of more. Option 1, maybe this story has no moral.  Simply, hikers find trash left behind by other hikers/fishermen. Option 2.  Sometimes when you wish for something, it appears, in this case, six cans of beer.  Actually, I wished for a bottle of wine, but a six pack of beer is ok.  Option 3. This particular moral relates to my previous post as space travel.  When you're camping, you can't expect food to be there when you get there so you have to bring it.  Option 4.  The caching of food in remote location has always been a practice.  Part of wilderness etiquette has always been not to disturb someone elses cache of food.  If food is cached, someone expects to find it there when they come back.  If you mess with their cache, you might put them in a bad situation. If you used their pile of firewood, you were expected to build the pile back up for the next person to come that way.  Seeing that whoever left the beer around, had already drunk most of it, I did not feel that I was violating their cache.  I suspect that whoever left the beer behind had had enough of it and just didn't feel like dragging it back up the side of the canyon. Option 4.  Traditional wilderness etiquette does not involve packing your trash out of the wilderness.  Wilderness was everywhere. You would merely be packing trash from one part of the wilderness to another.