This article was written in 2006 and summarizes a canoe building course offered at Montreat in the OE department that year.

This semester, 19 students are building a canoe for the special OE 460 class taught by Dr. Dottie Shuman. This is the second time the course has been offered at Montreat through a unique collaboration with David Melvin, local business owner of Black Mountain Canoes. Most of the work will be completed at Mr. Melvin's shop downtown. It's a cozy place to work this time of year. The small shop is heated by a wood stove that burns into the evening as the pairs of students labor to build this boat from the ground up. Mr. Melvin's friendly dog keeps an eye on the progress and helps the students by keeping their ears moist. In addition to building the canoe, students will also be constructing and finishing their own paddles during the course of the Spring semester.

In Dr. Shuman's words:

"The canoe building class is a wonderful opportunity for our students to gain unique hands-on experience in canoe craft.  Not only will students learn skills of using hand tools, working with wood and building a canoe but they are also having the opportunity to be a part of a team of 19 people working toward a final goal, although all 19 people never work together at the same time.  There will be so many lessons to learn along the way. I hope that they will see some wonderful connections between their own growth in Christ and the 'growth' of the canoe.  Each student will be required to reflect on all that they learned through this process."

The Art of Building a Canoe

This page is dedicated to marking the ongoing progress of the class and their project. As the canoe is built and finished, we will collect photographs and bits of the story along the way and share them here.

Part of the inspiration for the original class was to help students experience hands-on craftsmanship. Learning how to use hand tools can be intimidating and frustrating until you get the feel for them. Here, David Melvin, owner of Black Mountain Canoes, gives Montreat senior Allison Croley some instruction on the correct way to use a spoke shave.

Left on her own to practice, Allison laughs at herself as she struggles to follow Mr. Melvin's command: "Thou shalt shave up to the line, but thou shalt not ever, EVER shave over the line!" (She went over the line... but apparently won't fail the course for her infraction. After all, it was a practice board she was shaving.) "I'm all about the life skills!" Allison answered when asked why she was taking the course.

 Allison is normally the one taking the pictures, but here she shows us that she can be the subject too. It didn't take her long to get the hang of making the spokeshave take off just a little bit of wood with each pass, and soon she was ready to begin work on the actual stern of the canoe.

 Working with wood means that most mistakes are fixable. Slow, careful work and frequent stops to assess your progress helps avoid costly repairs though. Here we see the hands of senior Christi Mahan checking her work on the canoe's bow.

 At this point, the canoe hasn't begun to take shape yet. The blocks and clamps that secure the form stretch into the background behind Christi here as she stands working on what will be the front of the finished product. "I like working with my hands," Christi says. "I don't really have a lot of art stuff going on right now and I've already taken all the art classes at school. And this class reminds me of working with my Dad, too."