Setting up the Mould

For this post, I am combining two days of work into one. Yesterday, I finished assembling the bow and stern, as pictured on the right. Yet, today was the exciting day, in which, I was to set up the moulds and finally see the cedar strip canoe take shape. Ted Moore's in Canoecraft states, "As you set up the mould, prepare for a thrill as the first skeletal image of your canoe emerges." Now it may have seemed that all canoes for centuries were built on mould forms because it seems like a "no brainer," but that was not the case. Up until around 1857, the most advanced canoes were still dugouts, like the native american craft. For in 1857, John Stephenson is credited for being the first person to think of building a canoe off of a form. In this case the form was a dugout canoe called the Shooting Star. As John Jennings writes in The Canoe- A Living Tradition, "the building method was deceptively simple and used basic well known technology: a combination of techniques that would be familiar to builders of boats, carriages, wagons, sleighs, furniture and containers." (or basically everyone in that era) I am not sure where the idea of sectional forms came from, but I will find out. However, focusing back on my construction of the forms, the bottom of each mould was screwed to 2 x 4's in the strongback. With a sight line, as seen in the picture at left, the tops of each station, which were grooved at their center, were lined up almost perfectly. And thus the mould stations are complete and the next phase is bending the white oak at the bow and stern to form the stem.