Vob span

A while back, I came across this intriguing print on LiveAuctioneers.com with the listing title of "Original Albumen Photograph American Indian Guide".


"INDIAN GUIDE, c. 1870".
Details from the site mentioned a date of circa 1870. An original period photograph, it measures 2.25" x 3.5" and is housed in a beveled 5.25" x 8.25" period mat. The subject, according to the pencil notation below the image, "INDIAN GUIDE, c. 1870", is seen standing leaning on a canoe paddle. Unfortunately, no details regarding the identity of the subject were available.

Later, thanks to an email from blog reader Luc Poitras, I learned the image is of Gabriel Acquin, a Maliseet (Wolastoqiyik) guide who was the first to permanently settle on land that would eventually become St. Mary's First Nation.


Gabe Acquin (St. Mary's), c. 1866
University of New Brunswick Archives
In the photo Acquin is holding a rough looking paddle with an elongated grip typical of this region. Found a detailed bio page that mentioned some pretty neat stuff about the man. Here's an excerpt...

A turning-point in Gabe’s life occurred in 1860 when the 18-year-old Prince of Wales visited Fredericton. Passing by Government House in his canoe, Gabe was hailed by the prince, who asked for a ride. Against the remonstrances of equerries and household, Gabe paddled the future king across the river and into the mouth of the Nashwaak River before returning. Gabe was subsequently invited to England, first in 1883 as one of Canada’s entries in the International Fisheries Exhibition in London. With his canoe and wigwam and wearing an outfit beaded by his wife, an extraordinarily talented craftswoman, he set up camp on the ponds of South Kensington, renewed old friendships with royalty and officers he had known, and became, in the words of William Austin Squires, “the greatest social lion of the day.” Gabe is reputed to have gone to England again in the 1880s though this claim is undocumented. He was 82 when he took his last trip there, in 1893–94 with Paul Boyton’s World’s Water Show.

I scored a choice piece of black cherry stock last year that was wide enough and long enough to carve out 2 paddle designs. I decided that I wanted to attempt 2 native style paddles. The first and easier of the two, a Maliseet Style basically a narrow ottertail with tapering flat grip) and what I called a "Fusion Paddle"...an early Mi'kmaq blade with a Westcoast native style roll grip (another post needed for that one). Both blade patterns were taken from scanning and enlarging smaller illustration from Graham Warren's book and adjusting for size. The Maliseet paddle discussed in this post is 58 inches long, my ideal measurement for paddling solo.


I started by marking out the paddles and finding out the ideal orientation for the grain and blade for both. The resulting patterns fit nicely on the stock but needed careful sawing out of the blanks. I had to drill some pilot holes on the stock at set points and saw between them to crudely divide the stock into halves.



Given that the paddle blade came so close to edge, I had trouble setting the saw to allow for a curved cut, so I learned a trick from a woodworking book. Basically using a flat rasp to indent the wood just enough for the saw to bite and begin a cut. Worthwhile tip for the future.



Curves were then finished off with a coping saw. Having a bandsaw would be sweet but I've got no place for a powertooled workshop so elbow grease and the condo balcony had to suffice.

 



Shaving down the paddle while clamped to the patio furniture (all 2nd hand stuff anyway). To see the final shaping of the grip check out my earlier post on the Maliseet style grip. Everything was working out well until I started working on the throat and shaft (the last parts in my carving process). I started shaping down the area with a few strokes of the spokeshave, when out of nowhere buried superficially under a thin layer of healthy looking wood, a knot appears ... the worse kind too...with dead wood in the centre that dropped out and formed an angled 1/8" hole right through the shaft. At this point I realized that this paddle wouldn't be tripping worthy anymore but since Black Cherry is a premium wood, I continued with the intention of this being a show-piece on the cottage wall.

After all the sanding and final wetting of the grain, it as time for some decorating. The flat grip is ideal for use as another burning area, so I decided to burn images common to our cottage area. A Black-Capped Chickadee and Pileated Woodpecker on some White Pine (The Ontario Provincial Tree). Anyway, despite the structural blemish (not visible on these pics) I'm still quite happy with the work and it's one of three paddles gracing our cottage wall. 

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Another beautiful Passamaquoddy paddle from the National Museum of the American Indian with some barely visible incising decorations on the blade's shoulders...


Passamaquoddy Canoe Paddle
Wood, paint, varnish
Dimensions: 154.10 x 11.80 x 2.50 cm
Date Created:1850-1900
Catalog Number: 25/4432

As bit of a distraction from the bark canoe project, I decided to revisit the growing wood sraps pile in the locker room and see what could be salvaged into another paddle attempt. Early on in my paddle making hobby, I learned that one-piece paddles produced a lot of "waste cutoff" that could be re-used to make laminated paddles. Such was the case with the Ottertail Jay, Adirondack Guide, and this latest attempt. Back when cutting out the blank which eventually become a one-piece Maple Sparrow, I actively attempted to saw out the off-cuts with as little error as possible. I was left with 2 very usable pieces which are featured in the shot below when many of my paddles were still in the raw, blank stage.


Laminated Kayak, Solo Sparrow, Cut offs, Ottertail Jay
When the the maple cutoffs were aligned with each other, it reminded me of some of the West Coast native paddles from BC, but together the shaft area would be too narrow...a mistake I did not want to repeat as with my Nootka Raven. So I decided to laminate this with a narrow 1" square piece of walnut left over from the strips preparing the Greenland style kayak paddle. The first order of business was to square the edges of the cutoffs with my newly purchased power plane - an easy couple of runs set at 1/64" and the edges were smoothed evenly.


Planing the edges
The centre strip was cut to the length of the cutoffs (58") and aligned on a rigged laminating beam (wax paper on another planed board). By now, the glue-up and clamping are pretty old hat for me.


Aligning the strips & clamping the pieces

At this stage, dressing the blade was simple enough, but the grip area was now too wide for a proper circular shaft. On my last visit to the Canadian Canoe Museum back in February, I came across a new display of West Coast paddles (poor lighting for proper photo) referencing a book entitled Cedar : tree of life to the Northwest Coast Indians by Hilary Stewart. After my return to the city, I checked out the title at the Toronto Reference Library and made a photocopy of pg 58, which illustrates seven different styles of West Coast native paddles (not posted for copyright reasons). The style that most resembled the curves of my frankenstein paddle was the Tlinglit - although I wanted to add a cutout for the shaft reminiscient of the Kwakiutl illustration as well. So I measured out a 10" long shaft area and proceeded to cut it out with the hand saw. The resulting blank (with a has a very long blade (33") that will need to be shortened when I work with it along with an extended sloping upper shaft forming a triangular grip area.


Recycled Tlingit Style Blank

With sunshine and warm weather already in Toronto, I'm looking forward to carving this one out on the balcony soon.

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One of the methods of lining and tracking a canoe in rapids involves tying a rope in a sort of bridle so that the main pulling force is below the waterline. A good illustration of this canoe can be found in Pierre Pulling's  Principles of Canoeing available online on Hathitrust.org (Fig. 14, Page 109).

Longtime blog reader Bryan (who recently started a paddling business - Cold Spring Paddling - sent me an email of a creative paddle project by Chad Townsend of Banff, Alberta. It's called the Shearwater webbed paddle which aims to combine mechanical engineering, evolutionary biology, and modern material capabilities.



Some details of their product from their website:

• a practical application of ‘biomimicry' (copying nature's engineering / efficiency);
  
• a uniquely compact paddle adaptable for a variety of water sports (webbed blade folds inward, and shaft breaks down for storage and transport);
  
• an educational tool for science centers, camps, and parks.

Like many young entrepreneurs today, fund raising online is part of the process. You can read more about this inventor's plans here. As a traditionalist, I don't think I'll be carving any paddles like this anytime soon, but for any other paddlers wishing to push the design envelope to its limits, this might be up your alley.

When I last blogged about this paddle, I had come across a significant structural fault in the flattened grip area. A large crack filled with soft, punky wood emerged after shaving and sanding this area from its original 1 1/8" thickness. To "save" the paddle, a little emergency epoxy repair job was in order...the 1st time I've attempted something like this.


Dead wood crack & applying epoxy
After letting the epoxy set overnight, it was time to begin the vigorous process of sanding it down. Luckily, the direct sun on the balcony made working outdoors a very pleasant affair. I had to strip down to my undershirt because the sanding action warmed me up quick. Made for a fashion faux-pas photo especially with our now dead (but once highly productive) tomato plant in the background.



After checking out the grip, the bulbous palm area didn't quite agree with me, so I shaped it down to a more traditional triangular shape using some rasps. Pretty easy now that the area had been extensively thinned.


Before and After shot of shaping the grip

The different shaded walnut strips used to make this paddle gave the blade a bit of a streaked look. This reminded me of a time when I spotted a Barred Owl while paddling the Oxtongue River (just beyond the Western boundary of Algonquin Provincial Park on a day trip last year. Couldn't take a proper photo because while paddling a river solo with a significant current, my bird watching is limited to a quick use of binoculars with one hand while trying to brace the canoe with a paddle in the other. Unless I'm resting in a nice eddy, photos are tough to manage. Anyway, this stock photo shows the streaking pattern on the bird that I figured would blend with the walnut on the blade. Thought I would add some Eastern White Cedar leaves as an accent as well as a native inspired owl image (may sand off...not entirely happy with it) on the grip face.


Burning the blade & native owl on grip
All seemed well except that compared to the wonderful tight grain of Birch used for the Omer Sapsucker Paddle, the open grain of the Walnut & Poplar made for uneven burning and many blotchy spots. Not my best artwork but ultimately I was left with a pretty decent, extremly light, and very flexible paddle made from strips from the scrap pile. Can't wait to try this one out once the spring thaw hits and the cottage lake is open again.


Plain & Decorated Sides

May 5/08 UPDATE: This paddle has now been varnished. View it here.