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The difference in my mind is simply the availability of materials - if you're relying on driftwood or tiny dwarf birch to make boats, you're less likely to invest what's truly a massive amount of wood in a single vessel, provided you could even gather that much to make one. I'd support that with...

This is something I wrack my brain over constantly. There's got to be a better way. In my home-built canoes, I can run paddles across the two thwarts situated on either side of the central third of the canoe length. This sucks when the bugs are bad, and doesn't offer much padding. If I want a...

Petzl tikkas, with the 'red light' mode for night vision. They in combination with a Luci Light have worked out really well for me.

That may well be the case. I love mine, though. I made it through a Vermont winter in them and they did great; I would say they've got rather soft soles and I resoled mine with zero-drop vibrams a few months ago. (I walked a lot in them, so the original soles had several hundred miles on them...

I wore Lems for years, until the umpteenth nail went through my foot working. Get yourself a pair of Jim Green Troopers. JG also make a moc-toe very similar to those Lems Summits. In my experience decent leather properly loaded with something fatty - bear fat, sno-seal, otter wax, whatever -...

I love skin-on-frames. It looks like you've established your rib lengths by some system, how did you establish lengths?

^Picture's worth a thousand words!

I have never built a stripper but I have worked with a massive amount of wood in my life, and have steamed a great many skin-on-frame ribs where grain orientation is important. As far as I understand, the strength of a stripper comes more from the glass than the wooden shell. If you get...

I have friends who have self-sutured with dental floss. Much more convenient for repair than dental floss is artificial sinew, used in skin-on-frame building and indigi-craft; a sort of waxed nylon megafloss.

Just to remind everyone. I am a human! I enjoy doing human things like breathing and walking with my legs.

I played guitar four hours a day for twenty years, until my wrists gave out. Fly fishing, primitive skills and bushcraft got a decade out of me. Building furniture and fancy cabinets probably has another decade of good work to go. Now its deer. Firearm culture, especially pistol culture, has...

I have very limited exposure to Ally canoes but I found one this summer. It is an older model 15' boat, weathered but serviceable, and it surprised me by actually being a boat I wanted to paddle. Setup time is probably in the 30 minute range, requires a rubber mallet, and fairly easy for a...

Surely you mean "old-form long-nosed Ojibwai"!

I don't need an excuse to go back to Camden...I don't need an excuse to go back to Camden...

I used a tumpline not an hour ago! They are NOT for carrying significant weight by people unaccustomed to using them. I've made several, the fanciest a fifty-hour plant-to-product project out of agave, and they are a lot of fun. I have a WWII-era haversack with what's essentially a tumpline as a...

Found an interesting book in the boxes @sweeper gave me called How to Read Water, by Tristan Gooley. I picked it up to flip through with low expectations, thinking - I can already run rivers - but it's a far more interesting and in-depth book. It looks at how water behaves in all aspects, from...

Can I ask your height and weight? Does it oilcan at all?

You're smart to worry about contaminants with something like that. What about the tried-and-true USGI canteen/cup combo? A lot of companies have remade it in titanium, and they're hugely popular with the bushcraft crowd. I don't know if they were entirely crimped, but there was a...

Not my boat, but since we're all talking about solos I thought I'd share the link. I'm canoed-out for the summer or I would snag it. https://nh.craigslist.org/boa/d/lebanon-solo-canoe/7877326747.html

Cedar ribs would be fragile. Birch bark canoes are traditionally ribbed with cedar, so who am I to say no? You'd have to size up their thickness, which might nullify the weight advantage of using cedar in the first place. They'd probably bend easier than re-soaked oak, too. If you're going to...