Vatican boat model exhibit, Part 2

In a current temporary exhibit at the Vatican Museums, dozens of models of watercraft from numerous nations and cultures are presented to represent the diversity and interconnectedness of humanity. (See our previous post on this exhibit.) The models are displayed in glass cases (hence the poor quality of the photos that follow) with little explanatory material. 

We present our photos with the scanty information from the exhibit cards in quotation marks, and our own brief observations in parentheses. We invite readers to contribute additional information about any boat in the Comments. Only models representing craft from "outside the Western tradition" are included here. More images of other models from the exhibit will follow in a subsequent post. As always, click any image to enlarge.

"Japan: Sailing boat" (looks like it would be highly capable in surf)

"Indonesia: Sailing boat with outrigger" -- (actually two outriggers. Although the rig is set as a square sail, it appears to be hung asymmetrically on the mast and can probably be canted to form a kind of lugsail.)

"Philippines: Sailing boat with outrigger" -- (again, two outriggers. This is a banca, with a Western-style sailing rig.)

"Sri Lanka: Boat with fisherman" (We wonder if the model attempts to represent any real type of boat, or if it is purely fanciful, its shape dictated by the material available to the modeler. What's surprising and touching about this model is the paddler, who is modeled with a great deal of humanity.)

"India: Pirogue with rowers" (paddlers, actually)

"China: Boat for recreation" (and by that, we mean eating, drinking and sex.)

(background) "India: Pirogue with rowers" (again, paddlers in fact)

"Thailand: Royal boat" (identical exhibit cards for both models)

"China: Sea Junk" (The truncated bow and minimal rig are fascinating aspects of this model, which is certainly not meant to be an accurate representation.)

"Southeast Asia: River boat" (a sampan)

"China: Sea Junk with three masts"

"China: River boat"

"China: Dragon boat for racing"

(Nationality not identified)
Back row:
Left: "Raft for fishing with cormorants"
Center: "Houseboat with passenger and boatmen" (Error in labeling, as this open craft is clearly not a houseboat. The Italian label identifies it as a sampan with a passenger and a boatman)
Right: (label illegible in photo)

Front row: 

Left: "Houseboat with coxswain"
Center: "Houseboat with passenger and boatmen" (Error in labeling, as this open craft is clearly not a houseboat. The Italian label identifies it as a sampan with a passenger and a boatman)
Right: "Houseboat with fisherman"

"Samoa: Seven paddle canoe" (Noticeable similarities to a Samoan canoe in our post about Buckminster Fuller's model collection)

Japanese Boats of the Edo Period

On a recent visit to the new Harvard Art Museum, I came across two lovely 6-panel painted folding screens from Japan's Edo period (also called the Tokugawa Period,1603 to 1868) containing images of Japanese small craft.

A Portuguese ship arriving in a Japanese port. Western ships obviously being unfamiliar to the artist, it is not depicted with much verisimilitude. (Click any image to enlarge.)

Detail of the above image, showing a small boat of Japanese appearance ferrying the captain ashore, along with some cargo or gifts. The boat's size is difficult to interpret, given the varying scales of its passengers. The boat is sculled from the stern by a single sculler, but again this might be artistic license. 

The exhibit card for the above images, which show only the left of two folding screens mentioned (the right-hand screen not being of interest to this blog).

A landscape with a small boat in the foreground (third panel from the left). According to the exhibit card, it "tells the story of the Chinese calligrapher and poet Wang Ziyou (also known as Wang Huishi, 338?-386), who sets out in a small boat to visit his friend Dai Andao on a wintry night. Just as he reaches his destination, however, his inspiration fades, and he returns home alone without completing his visit."
Dai Andao, who had baked a cake, was miffed. "That Wang Ziyou is so goddamned existential," he muttered.

Detail of the above image. The figure in the stern (on the left) appears to be sculling, although his posture makes this ambiguous. It is also unclear if Wang Ziyou is the reclining figure in the bow, or if he is under the canopy and the figure in the bow is performing some other function.

The exhibit card for the two images above. The screen shown here is the left of the two referenced, the right one not being relevant.

More Tenmasens

My previous post, on the Japanese tenmasen workboat under construction by Douglas Brooks, failed to include any good photos of full-size boats, an omission which I'll correct here. Had I only dug a bit deeper on Mr. Brooks' website, I'd have found this lovely one, which he built with a Japanese builder in 2002:

Tenmasen built by Douglas Brooks and Mr. Kazuyoshi Fujiwara. Photo courtesy Mr. Brooks. (Click any image to enlarge)

As an apparently straightforward build, it's perhaps not surprising that some other tenmasens have been built for cultural/historical purposes, including this one in 2009 for the marine research organization/aquarium Aquamarine Fukashima:

Tenmasen built for Aquamarine Fukashima.

The two tenmasens show some important differences. The former has a blunt and massive bow and no seats (perhaps more in keeping with the boat's heritage as a cargo-carrier), while the latter has a fine and pointed bow and seats both amidship and in the stern. The "gate" that serves as a rowlock for the sculling oar is another interesting feature of the bottom photo.

Japanese Tenmasen Under Construction

Model of a Japanese tenmasen workboat. All images courtesy Douglas Brooks (click any image to enlarge.)

The Japanese tenmasen is, according to Douglas Brooks, "a typical small cargo boat from the Inland Sea region." Brooks, an American boatbuilder who specializes in researching and reproducing Japanese traditional small craft, is now building a tenmasen as part of the the 2013 Setouchi Festivale, an arts and crafts event in the town of Setouchi, on the shores of the Inland Sea. (We've written previously about Brooks, including his sabani [a hewn-plank canoe-like boat] and taraibune [a "tub boat"] projects.) 

Lines of a tenmasin.

To describe the drawing and the boat itself, I'll quote an email communication from Brooks:

The lines drawings are from the Seto Nai Kai Museum and date from the 1950's or so. The boat was built in Ushimado, a community now called Setouchi. Very typical Japanese small boat style, with the aft end of the plank keel uplifted, and two planks per side. One interesting feature is the two piece transom which is not in one plane but joined at an angle. In the drawing you can see the two stations used by the builder, another common element of boatbuilders here, who used far less reference points than their western counterparts. 

 Overall length is about twenty feet. 

This boat would have been propelled off the stern by a ro, or Japanese sculling oar, similar to the Chinese yuloh.  

Another interesting feature of the transom that Brooks did not mention is that it is recessed far forward of the aft ends of the planks.

Brooks at work on the Setouchi tenmasen.

Brooks is maintaining a detailed blog of the project. Here is the most recent post, but to read it in chronological order, go to the first post and then click "newer post" over and over. There's also a blog primarily for Japanese readers.

Visit Douglas Brooks' website. It's also the source to purchase his book, The Tub Boats of Sado Island, which is not available on Amazon.

The Ainu Itaomachip

The Ainu people of Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost large island, are culturally distinct from the Japanese. (See earlier post.) Frequently depicted as a primitive, hunting/gathering culture, the Ainu actually maintained a sophisticated trading economy prior to the 19th century.

The Ainu conducted trade with mainland Asia, especially with ports on the lower Amur River (now the border between northeastern China and Russia), as well as with Korea and with other parts of Japan. They used sewn-plank boats called itaomachip, built on an expanded dugout base and powered by both oars and sails as shown below. Some of the boats, at least, were about 50 feet long.

(Click to enlarge)
In this ca. 1798 illustration of an itaomachip, the rowers are Ainu and the passengers are Japanese merchants. Note the woven mat sail on an interesting double-mast rig. The masts can apparently be moved freely, tilting them forward or aft, relocating their bases forward or aft, and possibly even port to starboard. This might create a great deal of flexibility in the set of a very simple rig, ranging from squaresail to something approximating a fore-and-aft sail in a number of configurations.

Taking advantage of a law that banned almost all Japanese nationals from engaging in foreign trade, the Ainu exported their own products (furs, marine products), and acted as middlemen for Japanese merchants, exporting Japanese manufactured goods like pottery and ironware, and importing silk, glass and metal products, which the merchants sold for huge markups. But in 1809, this semi-black-market trade ended when the shogun decided to take over Japanese import/export activities for itself. It was then that the Ainu were forced into a life of subsistence foraging.

In 1989, after a gap of almost 200 years, three Ainu men built a 45-foot long itaomachip. Team leader Tokuhei Akibe initiated the project in 1988 as a means of reviving Ainu cultural heritage, enlisting the assistance of the National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka. The design was derived from old illustrations like the two shown here.

The plank stitches are clearer in this illustration. Note the elaborate decorations at both ends.

One of the first difficulties encountered was the acquisition of a katsura tree large enough to form the boat's dugout base, requiring intense negotiations with the management of an experimental forest -- the only place in Hokkaido with a tree of the necessary 3' diameter. Hollowing the dugout, by alternately burning and chopping, took a full month. "Expanding" it by filling it with water, and then heating the water with hot rocks, was described as the most difficult part of the project. The sides were then raised with 16"-wide pine boards and sewn with 325 feet of hemp rope. (The two processes of expanding and extending the hull are common to many other dugout boats worldwide.) Sea trials confirmed the good handling and seaworthiness of the type.

The 1989 reproduction boat, looking mighty fine under sail. (It seems to be much smaller than the 45' LOA reported in the article cited here.) As of 1999, it was on display at the National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka.

Illustrations, photo, and information are from "Itaomachip: Reviving a Boat-Building and Trading Tradition," by Kazuyoshi Ohtsuka, in

Ainu: Spirit of a Northern People. Many thanks to Yoram Meroz for this article and his insights.

Boats of the Ainu of Hokkaido

Old Photos of Japan is a fine blog aptly described by its title. A search for "boats" pulls up only a few hits, but they're quite interesting. I won't bother paraphrasing the content; just follow the links to the full articles.

The Ainu are the native people of Japan's northern island of Hokkaido. This article mentions their dugouts and describes their lashed canoes and sailboats. (Photo from the 1920s.)

Ainu fishermen in dugouts, with very specialized fish spears (photo from 1900s). Lots of detail here.

Thanks to Heather Hernandez, technical services librarian at San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park and blogger for Maritime Compass, for passing along this fine resource. Thanks also to Old Photos of Japan.

Sabani Sailing

Regarding my last post, reader Anton asked for more information on sailing sabanis -- specifically concerning the use of the multi-position mast step. The following illustration, again from Shiraishi's booklet (see previous post), shows how, by stepping the mast the aft-most position, the sail's center of effort moves forward, and vice-versa for the step's forward position.

As elsewhere in the booklet, the English text is rather deficient. I'll present it anyway, hoping that some reader can make better sense of it than I can:

How to mast or how to make sail differs according to the strength or direction of the wind.

The angle of a mast is adjustable by changing the position of HAIUSHIMI [i.e., mast step]. [Of course, the mast step doesn't move: it's the position of the mast in the step that changes.]

When the wind is not hard , the mast is set up vertically as shown in Fig. B and when the wind is hard, the mast is inclined towards the stern as shown in Fig. C, sometimes with the sail taken in a reef by one FUZAN's [i.e., batten's] length.

Since the way to mast SABANI is not complicated it can easily meet the change of the winds. Quartering (MASUBI) is easiest for SABANI to sail, with its sail open as shown in Fig. D.

Sailing with wind abeam or quatering (sic) is called USAGIBAI or USAGIBARASHI, then a skipper sits in the middle to draw the boat deep so as not to be driven sideways by the wind, as is shown in Fig. E.

Whew! Hard to make sense of that, aside from the interesting point about the skipper moving forward to try to increase the lateral plane when the wind's abeam. Considering that there's no built-in lateral plane (leeboard, keel, outrigger float, etc.), one wonders how well sabanis go to windward.

I also question the angling of the mast depending on the strength of the wind. I suspect that the real function of the multi-position mast step is to change the fore-and-aft location of the center of effort, as on a windsurfer, to aid in steering -- i.e., tilt the mast forward when heading downwind, and tilt the mast aft when heading upwind.

Sabanis - Canoes or "Boats"?

My last entry was a guest blog from Douglas Brooks, who is working on a sabani in Okinawa. He is maintaining his own blog of the project which makes good reading. Consider this post a complement to Douglas's blog.

The day after Douglas's guest post here, I discovered in my possession a booklet on sabanis which had been loaned to me by my colleague Ben Fuller, curator at Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport, Maine. SABANI Canoes of Okinawa, by Katsuhiko Shiraishi, appears to have been self-published (in 1985, I believe, but I can't find the data now). The text is in both Japanese and English, and although the English translation is, unfortunately, awful, the illustrations are very nice indeed. (The cover is shown below; all images in this post are from the same source.)

Whether the sabani is a "canoe" or not is debatable. On the pro side of the argument, it clearly evolved from a dugout canoe. The bottom is a massive cedar dugout, to which one side strake is added on each side (plus small partial strakes to raise the freeboard at the bow and stern. As Douglas Brooks noted, the strakes, too, bear a relationship to dugout practice, as they are not milled lumber, but hewed to shape.

On the other hand, it seems wrong to call anything a canoe that features such massive construction overall, and its shape is hardly canoe-like -- more banks-dory-like in its half-breadths, while the fish-form plan view is unique.

There is a very narrow triangular bow transom that might be considered a stem instead. The stern transom is very close to an equilateral triangle. All pieces are fastened together with dovetail keys, alternating on the inside and outside of the hull. Between each dovetail key is a bamboo nail driven at a very steep angle through one of the exposed plank surfaces so that it edge-nails the bottom to the strakes. (I can't tell if bamboo nails are used similarly at all other joints, or just the bottom-to-side joint.)

In the image below, the bow is on the left. The stern is considerably higher, to help the stern lift with following waves, according to Shiraishi.

Construction begins by fastening the ends of the strakes together, then forcing the strakes apart amidships, which produces a nice curved sheerline. Then the dugout bottom is carved to shape to sit on the bottom edges of the strakes -- as Douglas Brooks noted, this is opposite to the common procedure for producing an extended dugout, in which the dugout is produced first, as a base, and then strakes are added to build up the sides.

On the "it's a canoe" side of the argument, sabanis are paddled, not rowed, as shown below in the picture of a racing version of the boat, used at an annual festival in Okinawa. Note the unusual hand position on the gripless paddle: with the thumbs facing each other. Note also how the flat face of the paddle blade is not the power face.

Shiraishi repeatedly stresses that, due to its narrow beam, the sabani is a fairly unstable boat, prone to capsize especially under sail. (But very pretty under sail, as the image below shows.) It is, however, fairly easy to recover from a capsize. Due to their voluminous wood construction, the raised ends have considerable buoyancy, making the canoe unstable in an inverted position as well. The boatmen turn the boat broadside to a wave and then can easily flip the boat upright. Then they turn it again to face the waves and wait for the bow to lift on a wave while then apply downward pressure on the stern, thus allowing the water to sluice out over the transom. Climb in again, and off they go.

As an aid to turning the capsized boat upright, the mast is easily removed. Note how a pair of easily-removed wedges secures the mast through a square hole in the thwart. Note also the multi-position mast step, which allows the mast to be angled forward or back, depending on the point of sail.

Douglas Brooks on Sabanis

Douglas Brooks, an American boatbuilder and boat researcher who often works in Japan (and whom I've written about previously, especially here), is back there now, apprenticed to a builder of sabanis (about which I've also blogged before). Doug sent the following report:

I am in Iejima, Japan, a small island that is part of Okinawa, building an eight meter sabani, working with one of the last three builders of these indigenous fishing boats. This work is supported by the Center for Wooden Boats in Seattle, the Asian Cultural Council in New York and the Nippon Foundation in Tokyo. This is my fifth apprenticeship building Japanese boats.

I will keep my comments below very general as the point is to get the reader to go through my blog, where you will find more detail on history, culture, construction techniques, etc.

The sabani is what we would call a semi-dugout type, and in that respect it shares a story with many similar types around the world. As the Okinawans deforested these islands the timber required to make dugout canoes became increasingly difficult to find, hence the move toward a plank-built boat that still retains some of the characteristics of the dugout. So the boat we are building has a four inch thick bottom that we have shaped from three timbers, joined together with butterfly keys and bamboo nails.

Bob made a very interesting observation that sabani are built upside down, with the side planking first, and then the dugout bottom dropped on top. This is opposite of any semi-dugout traditions that either of us know, which start with the hollowed bottom and then add the side planks. It's also odd given that throughout the rest of Japan it's absolute law that boats are built right side up. I will try to ask my teacher what he thinks of this.

Most of the techniques are familiar to me from my other work in Japan, but I wanted to study sabani in part because of the fastening techniques. I already have several blog posts up about the huundu, or dovetail keys, so I won't belabor that here. There will be more postings to come as we continue to use these fastenings to assemble the boat. I am certain that they are a holdover from the days of dugouts, and iron fastenings would have initially been very expensive. I am also finding that while we install them using only hand tools, it is not a slow process, so it all makes good sense, even today.

There are other dugout and semi-dugout traditions in Japan, particularly in the far north, where some still survive. In the mid-90's I met the last dugout builder of Akita Prefecture. He was still fishing every day in a dugout he built in 1965 and he had just built his last dugout as part of a documentary project. On the coast of Akita, Aomori and in Hokkaido you can still find semi-dugout boats in small fishing ports. The first photo shows fishermen out on a winter day in 1965 in their hatahatabune. ("Hatahata" are a small fish, "bune" means boat.) You can just make out the dovetails keys in the bottom, which in a boat this size is six to nine inches thick [Bob here: note too the interesting handles on the oars.]

The next photo is an isobune which means inshore boat. These are still fairly common on the Aomori coast. The bottom is a single timber hollowed out, with a stem, transom, single frame and plank sides added. My teacher in Aomori told me that during his apprenticeship most of his work involved hollowing bottoms of isobune (he quit after three years of this unpaid work).

Finally, we have a bekabune, or seaweed gathering boat, that I built in the Urayasu Museum with Mr. Nobuji Udagawa in 2001. It shows the standard Japanese construction method, firmly fixing the bottom of the boat to low blocks on the shop floor braced overhead, then building the boat right side up. Props are used in lieu of clamps to hold the planking in place for fastening. The planks are edge-nailed to each other using special tools and nails. More information about Japanese boat building can be found at my website. Feel free to contact me via the website or to leave comments on my blog, The Sabini Project.

Back to Bob now.

I recommend Douglas's blog -- good photos and good writing, with interesting observations on the apprentice system and other aspects of culture in Japan.

A few more items that Douglas noted in our correspondence:

• The side planks of the sabani shown under construction in his blog are not standard milled lumber. "Don't let those side planks fool you, they are CARVED. We started with 2+" thick planks and hollowed about half of the volume out of them on the inside, leaving material for thwart risers and left full thickness at the stem and transom."
• On the dugout-style bottom: "My teacher has specifically talked about the thick bottoms as giving these boats their stability. I have roughly calculated that the bottom alone (it's long and very narrow) represents between 40-50% of the weight of the entire boat."
• And regarding my earlier post on sabanis, which stated that the helmsman sits in the front of the boat: "I suspect is a mistake made by the Japanese writer. It just doesn't make any sense at all. And I have yet to see a sabani or harebune with a helmsman forward. By the way, those festival boats are not strictly speaking sabani, at least not today. They are plank built and considered different from sabani among the old-timers."

Another Tub Boat, and Some Corrections

G.R.G. Worcester's monumental The Junks and Sampans of the Yangtze is full of some many fascinating boats, this blog could devote itself to that book for years and not run out of material. But since we've been on a jag about tub boats, we'll quote old GRG at length on the Wuhu Tub, drawings of which are shown above from the same source:

Floods, droughts, famines, civil wars, and other disasters carrying widespread poverty and distress in their train have brought begging to a fine art in certain parts of the Yangtze Valley.

Normally this is by no means a highly skilled profession, but at Wuhu its followers require to have a knowledge of nautical matters quite out of the ordinary. Here swarms of beggars in tubs cluster round ships made fast to the pontoons and occasionally venture to those at anchor some distance out.

This economical and ingenious custom originated as a practice with two old ladies some 30 or more years ago [i.e., around 1937]. Noting that sampanmen were often fortunate in begging from the passengers of ships making a call at the port, and not having the necessary capital to own or even to hire a sampan, they, nothing daunted, took to the water in the one available craft they did possess, a large wash-tub.

Instant success attended the introduction of this novel form of craft, a success dependent largely on human nature, for the idle passengers on deck are only too ready to be amused by the vociferous and heated competition between the rival crews as they scramble for coins or morsels of food, with all the attendant risks of colliding or capsizing.

As soon as one of the Yangtze passenger-steamers has made fast, several of these elliptical tubs, ranging from 3 to 4 feet across the major axis and sometimes as large as 8 by 6 feet, will appear as from nowhere off the outer side of the ship, varying from the "single seater" variety, paddled with the hands over the side, to one holding a complete family progressing in a style with home-made paddles.

The crew in this case usually consists of a woman who, with the inevitable child lashed to her back, acts as navigator and helmsman, and as many children as the craft will accommodate to paddle. There may be a supercargo in the shape of a baby in a cradle. All the children of an age to do so are trained to hold out their hands in whining supplication.

Does this sound a bit racist? Perhaps it is, and if so I sincerely apologize if it gives offense. It is, nonetheless, interesting from the point of view of our interest in indigenous boats -- in this case, a relatively modern creation (or adaptation) of a boat type outside the western tradition.

* * *

Corrections: Doug Brooks, American builder of Japanese boats, helped correct a few errors of fact or interpretation in my two prior posts on Japanese boats and boatbuilding (this one and this one). Rather than itemize corrections here, I have revised the posts themselves, so if anyone plans to rely on information in either of those posts, please take another look. Of particular interest is that Doug has a new book in the works covering all four of his Japanese apprenticeships.

Traditional Boatbuilding in Japan

Boat plan from The Tub Boats of Sado Island, by Doug Brooks. Available from the author. Click to enlarge.

Doug Brooks, the American expert in traditional Japanese boat construction, gave a lively, fascinating talk a few weeks back at Carpenter's Boat Shop in Pemaquid, Maine, speaking about tub boats and other types, as well as the state of traditional boatbuilding in Japan and the apprenticeship system there. What follows are notes and observations based on his talk, not a coherent treatment of a single subject.

Techniques

• Japanese boatbuilders generally use no clamps. They rely on the Spanish windlass and a multitude of props against ceiling, floor, and walls to hold things in place for fastening.
  
• Most strakes are edge-nailed to one another. An angled mortise is cut into the outside of the upper plank, near its bottom edge. Special boat nails are used: flat galvanized steel, somewhat curved, with an offset head. These are now hard to obtain, since traditional boatbuilding is virtually dead in Japan. The mortise is then sometimes covered with a small rectangle of sheet copper.


• Although planks are edge-joined, there is no caulking. Much effort is put into making a perfect wood-to-wood fit by "clamping" (see above) the two mating boards edge-to-edge, then running progressively finer saws between them. This is an exacting and lengthy process, but very effective. Japanese boatbuilders consider any seepage whatsoever that occurs on launching to be shameful, and they view the Western practice of caulking joints with suspicion -- viewing it possibly as evidence of a carpenter's inability to make a watertight joint through a good wood-to-wood fit..


• Most building is done in Japanese cedar. Little hardwood is available or used. Planks may be pre-bent over fire (live or charcoal), but not with steam or boiling water.


• Traditional craftsmen use few drawings and patterns, and those drawings which exist tend to be purposely incomplete, in order to protect "trade secrets." Patterns are usually just small bits of wood that show the proper angle for a particular joint. Everything else is in the builder's head.

The Apprentice System

• Students served a very lengthy apprenticeship -- as much as seven years. Even so, the master builder spent almost no time on instruction. The apprentice was expected to humbly absorb knowledge through observation...and through a process known as "stolen knowledge." If the master wouldn't explain a given detail, the apprentice was almost expected to sneak into the shop some night to copy patterns or otherwise figure things out. Although the objective was to duplicate the master's work, even so there was a saying, "The true craftsman must go beyond his master," improving on his methods in some respect.


• With the exception of Doug's book The Tub Boats of Sado Island, there are no comprehensive books in English on traditional Japanese boat building. Even in Japanese there are very few published works detailing the craft, and most of those that exist are monographs published by local museums, without national distribution. Neither are there any schools of traditional boatbuilding. Plans for traditional boats are not available. There are essentially no hobbyist-builders of traditional Japanese types.


• This is all partly due to the traditional secrecy of the master builders. They hoarded their knowledge, giving it up even to their own apprentices reluctantly. They would never commit designs to paper, fearing theft. Even today, with the last, aged builders passing from the scene, few will reveal their secrets. And given Japan's drive toward modernity following the Second World War, there were few young men interested in pursuing a traditional craft, and even fewer willing to serve the very lengthy apprenticeship required.

Doug brought a selection of tools to his talk. Photos follow.

Left: a pattern for the inside and outside curves of tub-boat planks and the angles of plank edges. Right: Japanese plane.

Red-headed item: an ink-line. The Japanese equivalent of a chalkline. The cross-shaped item is a tool for splitting bamboo lengthwise. The two interlocking pieces are wedge-shaped. Split bamboo is braided into hoops to hold tub boats together. (See drawing at top and next photo.)

A Japanese pull-saw, and a miniature example of the braided bamboo hoop for a tub boat. Doug says that braiding the hoops is the most difficult part of building a tub boat. They have to be just the right circumference -- to within a couple eighths of an inch -- in order to fit properly and provide the pressure needed to hold the boat together.

Doug is currently working on a book encompassing all four of his apprenticeships in Japan, with funding in the form of a publishing grant from the US-Japan Foundation. This book is due to be published (in English) in 2010 and Doug invites readers to email him their contact information so that he can let them know when the book is available.