Tools

The good news is you don't need a lot of tools to build a birchbark canoe. Here's what you probably need:

• A saw or chainsaw for cutting down trees ( I borrowed my friend Noreen and her chainsaw)
• An axe or hatchet for splitting wood
• A mallet or hammer for splitting wood. You can make one out of a piece of wood.
• Splitting wedges for splitting the cedar logs. You can make these out of hardwood or buy metal ones
• An awl for making holes in the birchbark.
• A knife for fine work. The traditional knife is the crooked knife.
• A hand drill for making holes for pegging the gunwales.
• A small saw for trimming
• A small hand plane and a spoke shave for smoothing ribs, gunwales etc. A thickness planer (a noisy machine) is also useful for getting ribs to the right thickness.

Here are two crooked knives, and old one and a new one. The upper one is an old Indian-made crooked knife with a blade made out of a straight razor. The lower knife is a new one made by Rick Syniec of California. I used both of these knives to make my canoe. This knife has a gently curved blade. Click on the picture to see it bigger. A crooked knife is called "crooked" because of the bent handle, not because of the curved blade. Not all crooked knives have curved blades.

You hold a crooked knife in your right hand (if you're right-handed) with your palm up and with your thumb along the bent part of the handle. You cut towards your body as if it was a one-handed draw knife. The native people didn't have a vice to clamp their work in so they held it with one hand and used a crooked knife with the other.

These are two awls. The top one has an antler handle and a round blade. The lower one has a triangular blade which is better for making holes in birchbark because it is less likely to split the bark. I found this one on sale at an antique show for less than a dollar. It's also great for leather.I also modified another round awl that I found at a hardware store. I ground it down to make a three cornered awl. The size of the awl you need depends on the thickness of the spruce roots you are using. You want the hole to be just big enough to get the spruce roots through. I have seen a birchbark canoe builder using a power drill to make holes in the bark too.

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© Judy Kavanagh 2001