De Pan

When last posted, the rusty file destined to be my crooked knife blade had been softened and ground down by hand over many laborious days. The edge of the manufactured blade had also been shaped with a file to a more shallow cutting angle. After working on the blades, creating the angled edge, and polishing off as many toolmarks as possible (still left a few), it was time to finally temper them.


Filing off the teeth; Blade shaped and polished
This involved heating the file back up to a cherry red colour (in an outdoor firepit), quickly bending the tip to the desired angle with pliers, reheating to cherry red and then dumping it into cooking oil to quickly quench and harden the steel (the manufactured blade was already bent, so it was simply heated and quenched). I planned to do this at dusk so that I could see the colour of the heated file more accurately. Since the steps had to be done rather quickly in near darkness, all the required stuff was layed out in an organized fashion. I used a small metal vice/anvil place the blade flat while bending the tip with pliers; a tall & narrow tea can seemed perfect to hold the 450 ml of Sunflower oil to do the quenching. Taking pics of the each step was not an option while working alone, but I did manage to take one blurry shot of the bent blade right before it was dunked in the oil


Ready to go; Quenched in cooking oil
All went well. I was expecting the oil in the can to burst into flames when the superheated steel was immersed but all that ended up was sizzling and the smell of french fries. Once it cooled down a bit, the metal was quickly tested with a hacksaw (not in the pics) to see if it was still soft but the blade simply bounced off the steel without any bite. The quenching had worked. Next morning, the blades were examined and of course were covered in disgusting residue that would need to be polished off. Here are the before and after shots.


Grime after quenching; Quick polishing
These were going to be working knives so I didn't bother polishing them to a mirror finish, just sufficient enough to be clean. The other reason for polishing at this stage is because some of the temper needs to be drawn out otherwise the blades may snap under pressure. This involved baking in the home oven at 450F for about an hour until a straw colour appears on the blade. Baking without polishing first means lots of unnecessary smoke in the kitchen.

This stage went well and next up will be a post documenting the making of the handles.

Update Oct. 2/09: Part 3 on making the handle has been posted.

One fascinating bit of traditional gear is the tumpline, basically a strap that placed across the crown of the head transfers weight to the person's frame rather than placing it on the shoulders allowing one to carry more weight with supposedly less effort. Many people curse the humble tumpline and cite that modern advances in building technology have made canoes and gear much lighter, thus rendering the tump system obsolete. Maybe so, but with my summer plans of tripping with the cedar canvas canoe and upper shoulder pain being a constant bother for me, I thought I'd revisit this piece of gear for my own canoe and try to make one for myself.

Cliff Jacobson's book on Expedition Canoeing writes about tumplines but his contracption involves sewing a canvas strip and securing it to the canoe with rubber straps and steel S-hooks...not appealing. Call me a nostalgia freak, but I wanted something a bit less "modern".

This Abnaki or Penobscot tump from the American Museum of Natural History is a woven from basswood cordage shows a typical native design although its construction is way beyond my current skill set.


AMNH Catalog No: 50.1/ 7611 - Tumpline
The forums at FrontierFolk.net have some replica designs of traditional tumps, although nothing I could spot that was meant for canoe portaging. Another design I came across was that on Bob Abrames' voyageur gear page pictured below. A combination of rivetted leather with woven cordage.


Bob Abrames' Voyageur Tump
In the end, I got the inspiration from one of my favourite sites about wildnerness canoeing, The Northwest Woodsman, which has some fantastic videos showing some wonderful backcountry. The emphasis on this site is on basic, traditional bushcraft rather than modern, ultralite techno. This page describing his tumpline has some fantastic pics and details of the general construction. I also came across Don Merchant's Pole & Paddle Company site which also has a page on leather tumps.


NW Woodsman Leather Canoe Tump

Strapped to the centre yoke

Ends can be used to lash in paddles too
The construction looks straight forward enough. I've already got a piece of latigo suitable for the headpiece will have to obtain some 3/4" latigo strips for the ties as well as getting some rivets. Update on this ongoing project soon.

Now that the exterior of the 14ft Chestnut / Peterborough was finished (Part 1 Link), it was time to start the superficial work on the woodwork. Didn't want to strip the interior since the aged patina looked pretty solid. After a simple sanding to roughen the surface, another coat of spar varnish was put on just to freshen the surface.

The original ash seats had long since lost their cane, so the previous owner simply used prewoven can and roughly jammed the edges through the existing seat holes. These have dried into place and are pretty solid. Obvious though that that last used wasn't a kneeler, because these rough cane ends would scratch and annoy the back of the legs.



Ending up using garden snips and a crooked knife to cut the cane ends as close as possible to the bottom of the seat. A basic sanding and things smoothed out sufficiently to not snag during kneeling. The seat cane is still firmly in place.




At some point the seats had been taken out and put back with 3/16 Robertson machine screws. The original steel carriage bolts probably had rusted beyond usage.



Ended up getting some brass bolts, but my source only had 6" in stock despite mentioning 4" ones being listed in stock on their site. A little extra work but they were cut down using a hacksaw and installed.




The glue on the outwale scarf joints has failed over time. These were simply epoxied back together with some additional wood filler used to fill out the chips and gaps.





When the canoe gets new canvas in a few years, the outwales with their rusted screws will be completely removed. I might replace them and go with a lighter weight wood in the future. But for now this one is ready for the water.

Another paddle awaiting some attention was my attempt at a cherry edged, birch-cherry laminated paddle based on a surmised Beothuk design documented in Adney's sketches. Unfortunately the sharp recuve at the tip was too much for the cherry striped edging and the glue did not hold when the clamps were removed. The rest of the blade was fine so in order to salvage this paddle, I redrew the tip a bit higher and re-cut the blade with this ultimately, more narrow tip. A while back, I had set up the shaving horse outdoors and did some work in the brisk spring sunshine.


Split Edging; Redrawn blade


Working on the shaving horse
Adney documented the surmised grip on this paddle as a spherical bobble and this would be my first attempt at something like this. Given the cherry edging, I thought it appropriate to laminate some extra cherry pieces onto the grip which could then be eventually shaped into a sphere. The approximate grip size sketched on the birch (with internal sketches of an octagon) was cut when originally shaping the blank. Additional blocks of scrap cherry were cut to size and then sawn to remove the angled edges resulting in an octagon effect when glued up. The plan is to further shape it with a rasp down to a bobble shape confortable in the hands. Here are some images.


The initial square grip with sketching; Cherry pieces, Glued up
I still haven't worked on the paddle shaft yet as there is more fine tuning to do on the blade region, but here is the work in progress so far...



Sept 1/09 Update: Part 3 has now been posted.

A joint  was cut and a sassafras cutoff was successfully glued up.