After watching the episode from “Ray Mears Bushcraft” about building a birch bark canoe, we became fascinated by the techniques and skills required to build such a canoe in the native way. We then set out to find ourselves a builder to teach us these fine skills. After searching around for a while we finally found Tom; Tom is one of the few remaining canoe builders that actually builds them completely in the native way. This means all wood is split, no sawing. Everything is attached using either wooden pegs or root lashings, no nails. Finally the seams are sealed using resin and bear fat, all nature no artificial stuff. You go into the woods, get the materials and build your canoe!
Read our story about how we built a natural birch bark canoe at Tom’s place.