
THE 
killed by fire, but fortunately there is a 
small patch of green spruce at the upper 
end of the upper lake in which a few good 
sized trees are to be found. We looked 
these over the second day after arriving 
there, and picked out a tree that was 26 
inches in diameter at the butt, straight as 
an arrow and free from branches up to 
about 30 feet. 
The next morning at 5:30 we sailed into 
this tree and in 20 minutes had it down. 
We cut off a log 16 feet long. Then we 
hewed off one side of this and made a flat, 
smooth surface 18 inches wide. This was 
PROCESS OF 
BLOCKING OUT. 
larger quantity of wood. We left about 2 
feet of solid timber at each end of the log 
for bulkheads. This left us an open deck- 
way of 12 feet. 
We then proceeded to cut notches about 
2 feet apart, from the top of the log down 
to the charcoal lines on the sides. When 
these notches were all sunk the next thing 
was to split out this surplus wood. For 
this we made. a number of wedges from a 
small, dead spruce we found in the vicinity. 
Standing on opposite sides of the log, 
Wright and I drove our axes into 
the end of the block, at intervals from the 

STARTING 
to be the bottom of the canoe, and begin- 
ning about 2 feet back at each end, we 
rounded off the ends from this bottom 
surface to the bark on the opposite side. 
This gave us the curves for the bow and 
stern of the canoe. 
Then we turned the log over, trimmed 
off the bark on either side, at a line that 
would give us a depth of 16 inches for the 
canoe. Then with a chalk line, which we 
chalked with charcoal instead of chalk, we 
lined these sides and proceeded to notch 
down to them. This was a more serious 
undertaking than that of hewing and facing 
the bottom; for it meant the removal of a 
FOR 
THE 
LAKE. 
charcoal line down to the deepest. point of 
the notch, until the block had started to 
split slightly. Then we placed 2 wedges in 
cither side of each block, and with the poles 
of our axes we drove the wedges carefully 
and steadily into the spiits which they 
made. Thus we were able to split out and 
remove most of each block. 
When the entire top portion of the log 
was thus removed we began excavating and 
removing the wood from what was to be 
the interior of the canoe. This required 
careful work, in order to avoid cutting 
through the shell and causing the boat to 
leak. We were able to remove most of 
336 
