One of my favorite things is seeing boats pop up on the Cape Falcon map in countries without any other builds yet! It’s interesting to see how people solve material challenges in various parts of the world.
Wit, an architect and sculptor from Bangkok, Thailand, recently spent a couple weeks building this pair of small nesting pack canoes and is now working on a kayak!
For his first canoe, Wit made the longitudinal pieces out of Ayous/Obiche, and the ribs out of kiln-dried white oak and beech. After experiencing significant problems with breakage trying to bend this wood, he decreased my normal rib spacing and used rattan on the second boat which he said steam bent extremely well. The skin is a 600 denier polyester coated with a locally available two part polyurethane.
About the Rattan Wit writes: “Here is the 2nd boat that I work with Rattan rib. The length is 12’ 4”, 23.5” beam, 8.x” depth, no skin yet. But it take only 5 day to complete the structure. No lost on bending at all after using Rattan. And it take half a day to complete the bending process. I think it could be a substitute bending material for tropical climate builder.”.
Being a smaller person these canoes are smaller as well. The larger one is 13‘2“ long and 25 inches wide. Very cool. Nice work Wit.
To see the full map and also building blogs from many of our students, check out our Student Builds blog link in our profile.
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This post was originally featured on our Instagram feed.
See the original post and discussion here.
