THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, October 18, 1995 TAG: 9510170094
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 08 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY MARY REID BARROW, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 200 lines
THE VARNISHED MAHOGANY of George Hamar's canoe still casts a brilliant reflection, its green canvas hull as smooth as the placid waters of Lake Joyce.
Although built in 1927, the Old Town canoe plies the lake waters as good as new, thanks to Thomas J. ``Tommy'' Tompkins, whose hands have lovingly restored it.
The boat's age is a point of pride for Hamar, a Baylake Pines resident who sought out Tompkins to restore the classic canoe he has owned since 1946.
For traditionalists like Tompkins and Hamar, who appreciate handmade things made of fine wood the way they were built a century ago, a wood and canvas canoe is a thing of beauty in a class all its own.
Tompkins is about the only person in these parts that Hamar could have found to bring back to life an old wood and canvas canoe. There aren't many craftsmen around these days who work with tried and true materials now that fiberglass and other man-made substances are available.
``People ask me why I build these out of canvas,'' Tompkins said, ``and the only appropriate answer is, `I know how.' It's a real art because there is only one way to build them if you're going to adhere to old construction methods.''
Wood and canvas canoes still are constructed by steam bending a variety of beautiful woods for the frame and holding the wood in place with real brass and bronze tacks the way boat builders did a century ago.
A canvas cover is stretched over the frame, coated with a filler and sanded to a silky smooth finish. High gloss varnish brings out the contrasting hues of the various woods and forest green marine paint makes the canvas hull shine.
``It's one of the few crafts that you can't improve upon,'' Tompkins said.
Tompkins is an eighth-grade civics teacher at Princess Anne Middle School. But for 12 years during late afternoons and on weekends, he's been adhering to those old construction methods to restore and build canoes in the garage of his Three Oaks home. His son, Cort, 13, often works with him in the business, called Cedar Island Canoes.
Hamar's canoe is the 13th that Tompkins has restored, and he has built seven others from scratch. He sells his canoes for about $2,000 each, one at a time, at wooden boat shows like the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Festival and Classic Boat Show last weekend at Norfolk's Waterside.
``I probably make a buck fifty an hour,'' Tompkins said, laughing.
Handmade canoes are hard to come by. Tompkins estimates that less than 12 full-time businesses turn the boats out, mostly in the Northeast, and maybe another two dozen folks like him build them as an avocation.
A person can wait two years to get such a canoe on order from Old Town Canoe Co. in Maine, known as one of the premier canoe builders in the world. Still Tompkins tries to avoid taking orders for his canoes
``I want to build it the way I want to build it,'' he said, ``on my own time and in my own way.''
Canoe No. 7 was in Tompkins' garage awaiting finishing touches, side by side with a steel banded canoe frame. Fifty percent of a canoe's construction takes place on this pattern where steam-bent planks and ribs are nailed together around the frame's contours.
Tompkins uses four kinds of wood for various parts of the canoe. He chooses his wood for features such as strength, suppleness and beauty.
``But you just don't go to HQ and buy wood,'' he said.
The wood must be air dried and not kiln dried. Kiln drying, the method used for a lot of construction wood, takes the wood's moisture content down too low and makes it too brittle to bend. The wood also must be first-rate, free of knots.
``You have to select wood from the best part of the tree,'' Tompkins said, ``like choosing a filet mignon.''
Canoe planking must be up to 20 feet long because the standard length of a canoe is 16 or 18 feet. That means the wood also must be cut from tall, straight trees.
Tompkins uses ash, the wood of baseball bats, for the curved ends, or stems, of the canoe. The stem ends take a beating and ash is rock hard but steam bends easily.
He uses maple for the inwales because it is another strong hardwood that bends easily. To contrast with the light yellow maple, he used a dark Honduras mahogany for the outwales, seats and cross pieces, or thwarts. Honduras mahogany has a tighter grain than other mahoganies, Tompkins explained. Canoe ribs and planking are made of durable northern white cedar, shipped in from Maine, which is less brittle than Virginia's Atlantic White cedar.
Canoe ribs are steamed in a metal steam box, and the steam is generated by boiling water on a Coleman stove. The long planking boards, narrow and thin, are bent with nothing more than water and a household iron.
``It's nothing complicated,'' Tompkins said, laughing. ``We're not talking space shuttle here.''
When the wooden structure is complete, minus the outwales, the canoe is dropped down into a canvas stretching device, like a sling. The canvas is pulled drum tight around the canoe and finally held in place by the outwales. An oil-silica compound is used to fill in the canvas web and after it dries, the boat is ready for varnish, paint and brass hardware.
``That's the joy behind these canoes,'' Tompkins said. ``Fifty years from now, you can take a damaged canoe, take the canvas cover off, put a new one on and you're ready to go.''
That, along with replacing some of the wood work, is what Tompkins did with Hamar's 68-year-old canoe this summer and it's ready to go.
Working with wood and canvas canoes is a natural for Tompkins. The Suffolk native has been an outdoorsman all his life, canoeing and backpacking. He also worked with wood long before he got interested in building canoes.
``I was in soap box derbies as a kid,'' he said. ``I was always building stuff.''
For several years, Tompkins traveled up and down the East Coast competing in marathon races in extremely light canoes, made of Kevlar. On those trips, he began to notice other types of canoes, especially finely crafted ones made of wood.
He went on to become interested in the evolution of canoes, from the dugouts American Indians first made here in this area to the birch bark canoes, made with cedar frames and a birch bark skin, by Indians in the Northeast.
Wood and canvas canoes evolved from birch bark canoes, probably because large birch trees with big strips of bark became harder and harder to find, Tompkins surmised. Another ``skin'' had to be used.
He also began to research the sociological history of canoes. For example, today folks think of canoeing as an escape, a way to find some solitude. But in the earlier part of the century, in the heyday of wood and canvas canoes, canoeing was a convivial way to meet with people.
``With no radio or TV, canoe gatherings were a social activity,'' Tompkins said.
Tompkins makes a point of putting his name, the date and a note about a current event in each of the canoes he builds because he knows whoever repairs it 50 years from now will have the same sense of history he has.
``Everybody thinks I'm a shop teacher,'' he said. ``But to build these canoes you have to have a love of history.'' MEMO: Hull, history and sentiment restored in 68-year-old canoe< George
Hamar purchased his Old Town wood and canvas canoe for around $100 in
1946 after coming home from a 30-month Army tour in Europe during World
War II.
At the time, the secondhand canoe meant nothing more to Hamar than a
reward for 30 months of hard work, a pleasant diversion. He used his
canoe until 1974 when it started leaking. By that time, the canoe had
worked its way into Hamar's heart and mind.
``I spent years in that canoe,'' he said. ``I courted my wife in
that canoe.''
Hamar couldn't bear to part with the old work horse, yet he didn't
know who could repair it either, so the canoe sat for 20 years in a
storeroom in his house. When Hamar discovered canoe builder Tommy
Tompkins, he decided to get his old treasure restored. Tompkins
completed the work this summer.
While Tompkins was replacing the worn canvas and broken pieces of
wood, Hamar set about researching his canoe's history. He sent the
serial number off to the Old Town Canoe Company in Old Town, Maine,
where the company has been in business since the turn of the century.
Old Town still had the records of Hamar's canoe in their files.
Canoe No. 93482 was one of several canoes shipped in May 1927 to R.H.
Macy & Co. in New York City. The shipping order also notes a running
list of dates that tell when the canoe was covered with canvas,
varnished and such.
At the same time, Hamar discovered that Old Town shipped a similar
canoe to Virginia Beach in 1928. Hamar wonders if anyone here still has
this sister canoe. Is it restorable? Is it for sale?
``I would love to find out who has that other canoe,'' he said.
It wouldn't be unusual to discover the canoe still in use. Wood
canvas canoes are known for their longevity because they can be repaired
by replacing the canvas cover.
Meanwhile, Hamar's own canoe, 68 years young, is back on Lake Joyce
behind Hamar's Baylake Pines home. Hamar, his wife and grandchildren
enjoy paddling around the lake the way he did more than 20 years ago.
``It looks like it is brand new,'' he said. ``It's a beaut.''
- Mary Reid Barrow
ILLUSTRATION: [Cover]
KEEPING THE PAST AFLOAT
[Color Photo]
George Hamar paddles his restored 1927 wood and canvas canoe in Lake
Joyce, behind his Baylake Pines home. He bought the boat, used, in
1946.
Everybody thinks I'm a shop teacher. But to build these canoes you
have to have a love of history,'' says Tommy Tompkins, an
eighth-grade civics teacher at Princess Anne Middle School.
Photos by T. TODD SPENCER
For 12 years, Tommy Tompkins has been building and rebuilding canoes
the old-fashioned way - by steam bending a variety of beautiful
woods for the frame, holding the wood in place with real brass and
bronze tacks and stretching canvas over the frame.
Photo by T. TODD SPENCER
Restored to mint condition by Tommy Tompkins, the 1927 Old Town wood
and canvas canoe is returned to the waters of Lake Joyce by George
and Marion Hamar. ``I spent years in that canoe. I courted my wife
in that canoe,'' George Hamar said.
Photo by T. TODD SPENCER
Restored to mint condition by Tommy Tompkins, the 1927 Old Town wood
and canvas canoe is returned to the waters of Lake Joyce by George
and Marion Hamar. ``I spent years in that canoe. I courted my wife
in that canoe,'' George Hamar said.
THE WOOD & CANVAS CANOE
[Illustration]
by CNB