De Pan

Drilling Stake Holes

Back to the bark canoe building. Next up a necessary job with power tools. Since I'm constructing the canoe on an elevated wood building bed, 1¼" holes needed to be drilled for the placement of the stakes used in the bark foldup process. If this were built on the ground, the stakes could simply be driven into the soil, but a building platform allows me to build at a more comfortable height and in the relative climate-controlled setting of the garage.

First, the plywood form was assembled and placed on the bed lined up with the all the guidelines. Some heavy broken patio stones (free discarded stuff from a neighbour) were placed on top to weight down the form.


Frame on bed; Weighted down with stone
Following the pattern on the building bed used for the model canoe, a total of 13 holes were drilled on each side of the boat, for a total of 26. Given that bed is made with nominal 2x10 board, the thickness drilled was about 1½". This took a lot of work with my low-budget drill, but the job eventually got done (noisy!). Once the holes were completed, I did a dry run by placing the stakes in the holes to check for "snugness". All is well and I can now proceed.


Drilling a hole; Completed building bed


Testing the stakes
The pot and grill under the bed were picked up at a roadside flea-market that I always pass by when heading up here. This time around, I stopped to checked it out and ended up with an appropriate pot and grill (plus some other stuff) for $2. I'm intending to use this pot to boil roots and make the pine pitch (which ruins cookware) over an open campfire when the time comes.