. Bulletin - United States National Museum. Science. At the start of ribbing out a canoe, the first two or three ribs might not be put at each end until after the headboards had been fitted, and sometimes a rib was placed on each side of the middle thwart, appar- ently to hold securely the sheathing butted amid- ships while the ribbing progressed toward them from the ends. When a canoe was short and rather wide, the ribs usually were bent by placing them inside the faired bark cover before the sheathing was installed, there to dry and set or to season, depending on whether they were steamed or
. Bulletin - United States National Museum. Science. At the start of ribbing out a canoe, the first two or three ribs might not be put at each end until after the headboards had been fitted, and sometimes a rib was placed on each side of the middle thwart, appar- ently to hold securely the sheathing butted amid- ships while the ribbing progressed toward them from the ends. When a canoe was short and rather wide, the ribs usually were bent by placing them inside the faired bark cover before the sheathing was installed, there to dry and set or to season, depending on whether they were steamed or green. Prebending the ribs, as described in the building of a Malecite canoe, worked well only when the canoe was long, narrow, and sharp. The spacing of the ribs was done by eye, not by precise measurement, and was never exactly the same over the length of the canoe. Ribs near the ends were usually spaced at greater intervals than those in the middle third of the length. The extension of the bark beyond the ends of the inner gunwale in an eastern canoe was often about one foot on each end, but this distance was actually deter- mined by the length of the bark available and by the usual reluctance of the builder to add a panel at the end. For the height of the end posts, in sheering the gunwales, a common Malecite measurement was the length of the forearm from knuckles of clenched fist to back of elbow. These posts were often left in place until the stems were fitted. The use of a building frame is known to have been common in areas where, normalh', the gunwale frame would be employed in the initial steps in build- ing. In a few instances this occurred when a builder had a number of canoes of the same size to construct. It seems probable that the use of the building frame spread into Eastern areas comparatively recently as a result of the influence of the fur-trade canoes on construction methods. The employment of the plank building bed in the East is known to have occurred amo
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Keywords: ., bookauthorun, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1870, booksubjectscience
