Inspired by a remark on a current thread that boats are rarely mentioned.
The project nearly finished in Falmouth, Cornwall, to reconstruct a full-size Bronze Age Boat could be said to be pure bushcraft with its hull of oak mostly held together with stitches of yew withies.
[video=youtube;22chM3wYrk0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22chM3wYrk0[/video]
Hopefully it will be launched at Falmouth on the fourth of March.
This project has taken a lot of money and labour but knocking up a boat can be as easy or as difficult as you care to make it. A pirogue from plywood and epoxy can be built in a weekend and finished in a week easily, actually using much same basic technique of sewing as with the Bronze Age Boat.
B&Q and other suppliers will even cut the ply into the widths you need for the planks thereby saving you from the most awkward part of cutting up a plywood sheet accurately. Each plank of course needs joining which is not difficult but could be avoided if full wooden planks are used but then it can be difficult, and expensive, to get them wide enough meaning added complication for the build if you cannot.
Even more bushcrafty would be to use wooden planks and to stitch the pirogue together with withies and caulk it with tallow and moss as with the Falmouth boat, something I have been playing around with for years as a, now stalled, project.
The project nearly finished in Falmouth, Cornwall, to reconstruct a full-size Bronze Age Boat could be said to be pure bushcraft with its hull of oak mostly held together with stitches of yew withies.
[video=youtube;22chM3wYrk0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22chM3wYrk0[/video]
Hopefully it will be launched at Falmouth on the fourth of March.
This project has taken a lot of money and labour but knocking up a boat can be as easy or as difficult as you care to make it. A pirogue from plywood and epoxy can be built in a weekend and finished in a week easily, actually using much same basic technique of sewing as with the Bronze Age Boat.
B&Q and other suppliers will even cut the ply into the widths you need for the planks thereby saving you from the most awkward part of cutting up a plywood sheet accurately. Each plank of course needs joining which is not difficult but could be avoided if full wooden planks are used but then it can be difficult, and expensive, to get them wide enough meaning added complication for the build if you cannot.
Even more bushcrafty would be to use wooden planks and to stitch the pirogue together with withies and caulk it with tallow and moss as with the Falmouth boat, something I have been playing around with for years as a, now stalled, project.
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