Gateways for...

This article was written in 2006 and summarizes a canoe building course that has been offered over the past 6 years through the Outdoor Education Department at Montreat College.

This semester, 23 students are building a canoe for the OE 480 Special Topics: Canoe Craft class taught by Dr. Andrew Bobilya. This is the third time the course has been offered at Montreat through a unique collaboration with David Melvin, local business owner of Black Mountain Canoes. Most of the work will be completed at Mr. Melvin's shop downtown. It's a cozy place to work this time of year. The small shop is heated by a wood stove that burns into the evening as the pairs of students labor to build this boat from the ground up. Mr. Melvin's friendly dog keeps an eye on the progress and helps the students by keeping their ears moist. In addition to building the canoe, students will also be constructing and finishing their own paddles during the course of the Spring semester.

Dr. Shuman, former coordinator of the course and faculty member in the O.E. Department shares,

"The canoe building class is a wonderful opportunity for our students to gain unique hands-on experience in canoe craft.  Not only will students learn skills of using hand tools, working with wood and building a canoe but they are also having the opportunity to be a part of a team of people working toward a final goal, although all of the students never work together at the same time.  There will be so many lessons to learn along the way. I hope that they will see some wonderful connections between their own growth in Christ and the 'growth' of the canoe.  Each student will be required to reflect on all that they learned through this process."

The Art of Building a Canoe

This page is dedicated to marking the ongoing progress of the class and their project. As the canoe is built and finished, we will collect photographs and bits of the story along the way and share them here.

Part of the inspiration for the original class was to help students experience hands-on craftsmanship. Learning how to use hand tools can be intimidating and frustrating until you get the feel for them. David Melvin, owner of Black Mountain Canoes, gives Montreat student Addie McHenry instruction on how to cut out the form for the wood strips to be placed against.

 

Allison is normally the one taking the pictures, but here she shows us that she can be the subject too. It didn't take her long to get the hang of making the spokeshave take off just a little bit of wood with each pass, and soon she was ready to begin work on the actual stern of the canoe.

 

Working with wood means that most mistakes are fixable. Slow, careful work and frequent stops to assess your progress helps avoid costly repairs though. Here we see Lauren Scowcroft fitting together little pieces of wood to make the design that will go along the sides of the canoe.

 

At this point, the canoe has begun to take shape, the blocks and clamps that secure the form stretch into the background. Brittany Cerney makes sure that the wood strips are held tightly in place so the glue will dry trightly togeher and in the correct shape.