Wood is Good

Well finally found some wood. Will be pickin it up tomorrow more than likely ... you would think that in this pine-filled country of Canada it would not be difficult to find someone close who would mill some 4X2 for the gunnels but it has been exasperating trying to find someone who can provide knot free quarter-sawn wood.

More benders...

Well we went steaming again today, plan was to get all the centre ribs bent today so that we're ready to change the form over to make the different shaped ones at either end during the week.

Rib Bending

Right so, Oscar picked up some green clear cedar of various sizes. We cut an 2"x 8" piece into 3/8" strips approx 7' long. The bandsaw jammed up a couple of time due to the wet nature of the green wood. Thinking of getting a thinner blade for the table saw and using that instead.

What wood to wield...

At this stage our wood choice still hasn't been decided.

Careful now....

Right so where do you start when ya want to build a Naomhóg?

Bhuel, we have a place to build it and I have all the tools that we need to get crackin so we are making a two-pronged attack on getting started.
We decided to start on both the wood and the steamer.

The (dodgy) Builders

So let's give ya a bit of background about the builders of this here boat (which may at various times be referred to as a canoe, currach and/or naomhóg)

This blog is going to be a record of how to build a traditional Irish boat called a currach. There are several different forms of this boat depending on which part of Ireland you want to venture to  and the differences between them are fairly well documented online so we will concentrate mostly on the one we have selected to build.
The Naomhóg, this is probably the best looking currach and of course we want a beautiful boat so that's the one we're going to build. They come in various lengths depending on how many rowers you want. We're going to go for a 3 rower boat which will come out at just over 20 feet in length. Personally I would prefer working in mm but I live in Vancouver, Canada and all the drawings I have from books are in inches so I will act like a local and use imperial.
This might sound a little vague in terms of measurements but I will be be putting up a SketchUp model for download with exact measurements on it and also a 3d image once we have completed the boat.

So, why bother writing about it? Surely there must be a ton of information on how to build a currach out there??
Well. no , not really. There is some information, there is a book written about 80 years ago and there are some pictures, but you have to go to a lot of different sources to get a complete picture and you still don't have a 'how-to' guide to building a currach.

There are of course still people in Ireland who build them and there are a couple of places that teach you how to do it but their online presence is pretty weak and plans are not freely available.

So the aim of this blog is to document, in a wholly open way, the good and the bad of attempting to build a naomhóg. To give the exact measurements, any templates needed and the types of wood suitable for building.
Leanaigí....