Frustration!!!

The last week on the project has been a nightmare and things have almost got to the stage of despair! Everything that can go wrong seems to be going wrong and progress is very slow!

After last years 'Promethues' project it was decided that 'The Eurybia' would be built using fire and the result would be as good as those in 'The Prometheus'. This was not the case. After a number of small scale burn experiments the fire seemed to do very little to the parent log. The fire appeared to only burn the outer sap would but not penetrate the heart wood underneath. This led to further research into ethnographic log boat construction. This led us to the belief that we were being very impatient and that the burning we had done so far was no where near long enough.

A fire was set all along the log and would be left and attended for 48 hours to see if it was due to our impatience the fire appeared to be making no impression on the parent log.

  It was decided that a fire would be set on the parent log and the burn allowed to continue for 48 hours. This would mean constant supervision so sleeping bags were packed and we moved into the Mesolithic Tepee.

Early morning in the Mesolithic Tepee after tending the fire all night.

The burn was divided into two section on the log, one was a wood fire the other a charcoal fire to examine the difference in fuel used during the burn. The fires were kept going over two days and nights before being cleared off and the damage assessed.

The over night burn.

Once the 48 hours was up the embers of the fire were removed and the effect of the fire tested. Disappointingly and frustratingly the fire, even though having burnt for 48 hours had had almost no effect on the parent log.

One section of the log after the embers had been removed from the over night burn.

After clearing the burnt area it was possible to see just how little effect the burn had on the parent log. 

 It was appearing that the parent log of The Eurybia was too green to burn with the fires set on top of the log. This brought to light that fire may well not have been used to construct prehistoric logboats if the log being used was green. The lack of progress with the use of fire on the green log could also be due to lack of experience of the process as many documents describe historical log boat builders as constructing their boats out of green wood using fire.

For the moment the project has slowed down as we start hand hewing out the log without the aid of fire. This has slowed the progress of the build down and disheartened our team but we are still clinging on to our launch deadline and will be working hard to meet it.