César’s Bark Canoe is a fantastic NFB (National Film Board) film from 1971, produced by Bernard Gosselin. It captures César Newashish, a 67-year-old Attikamek of the Manawan Reserve north of Montreal, building a canoe solely from the materials from the forest, including birchbark, cedar splints, spruce roots and gum.
After I installed the decks, I concentrated on finishing the outwales, seat placement and thwarts. The outwale install was okay but I had a couple of issues.
I started to earnestly scrape the inside of the canoe this morning. I had previously tried using a regular paint scraper with the blade rounded by file and grinder - the scraper needs to be rounded to accommodate the concave surface inside the hull.