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they put wedges into it, and drive them with such dexterity (as they have told me - for I never saw it) that they divide it into slabs of 3 or 4 inches in thickness, seldom meeting with an accident if the tree is good. These slabs they very soon dubb down with their axes to any given thinness; in this work they certainly excell; indeed their tools are better adaptd for it than any other performance; I have seen them dubb of the first rough coat of a plank at least as fast as one of our carpenters could have done it; and in hollowing, where they have liberty to raise large floors of the wood, they certainly work quicker, owing to the weight of their tools: those who are masters of this business, will take of a surprizing thin coat from a whole plank, without missing a stroke; they can also work upon a peice of wood of any shape as well as they can upon a flat one, for in making their canoes every peice is formd first into its proper shape, bilging or flat: for as they never bend a Plank all the bilging peices must be shap'd by hand which is done intirely with axes. They have small axes for carving also but all their carvd work was so bad and in so very mean a taste that it scarce deservd that name.
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Voyaging Accounts |  |
© Derived from State Library of NSW Transcription of Banks's Journal page (vol.1) 389, February 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
To cite this page use: https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/-banks_remarks-144.html