I got a notion to try my hand at making a dugout canoe. A neighbor up the road gave me a cottonwood log and even helped me load it. Joel loaned me a trailer and Mike helped me retrieve the log last month. It’s been sitting in my driveway ever since.

Yesterday, Robert came over and we used a peavey to turn the log over and a spud to debark it. We shaved off a few small branches with a hewing ax and an adze.

Then we wrapped a choker around the log and used the truck to drag it down to the shop, where we built a cradle.

Mike showed up to share the fun and the three of us used the peavey, a lever, some chocks, brute force and ignorance to roll it up onto the cradle. That pretty much finished us for the day.

I think the next step will be measurements marked onto the log and shaving it down to a symetrical shape. If I botch it or find it to be too ambitious of undertaking, it may become firewood. Time will tell.