Wooden Boat People

By McKenzieDriftBoat.com

Black Eagle mini dory (was: baby Briggs build)

I love my big 17' Jerry Briggs-inspired Grand Canyon dory from Andy Hutchinson's plans, but she's way too big for day runs. Time to build a little boat.

10'-6" LOA

60" beam

36" floor width

~23" deep at the oarlocks

I made three paper mockups, and two smaller 1:12 tagboard mockups. One final 1:6 cardboard mockup before committing to plywood:

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Cut the plywood. One piece ripped diagonally lengthwise, the bow panels out of the width of another sheet. Side panels 11'-10"

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I was having a hard time getting straight scarfs with my saw jig, so I cleaned them up from here with a ROS and 60-grit. You want the ramps to all touch the previous sheet and the glue lines parallel. The top piece was really ugly and got re-cut entirely. This isn't fancy AA marine ply, just $30 AC ply from the box store. Not worried about knots; I'll be glassing the entire boat inside and out.

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I like woodgrain. Used a latex exterior stain. Oil based stains can interfere with the epoxy joint.

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Epoxy on the joint faces and clamped/screwed for the night.

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by David Witton on April 17, 2021 at 7:49am

It's been fun watching this build - I love it when folks come up with new designs, it moves the whole "wooden dory" thing forward. Let us know how it rows!

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Permalink Reply by Rick Newman on April 17, 2021 at 6:51pm

Absolutely!

Rick N

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Permalink Reply by Shawn Baker on April 19, 2021 at 7:32am

Black Eagle Falls

The Mandan and the South Piegan Blackfeet, among other Native Americans, knew of the falls. Salish Indians would often hunt bison in the area on a seasonal basis, but no permanent settlements existed near the Great Falls for much of prehistory. Around 1600, Piegan Blackfoot Indians, migrating west, entered the area, pushing the Salish back into the Rocky Mountains and claiming the area as their own.The Great Falls of the Missouri remained in the tribal territory of the Blackfeet until colonials claimed the region in 1803.

The light-brown and red-brown sandstone layers beneath all the falls are 115-million-year-old products of the Cretaceous Period of the Mesozoic Era, when modern mammal and bird groups, along with the first flowering plants, also emerged. Later in the nineteenth century, geologists named these old riverbed sandstones the Kootenai Formation.

On June 13, 1805, Meriwether Lewis of the Lewis and Clark Expedition became the first white person to see the Great Falls (the largest of the five waterfalls). On the second day that the expedition camped near the series of falls, Meriwether Lewis discovered Black Eagle Falls. I arrived at another cataract of 26 feet...below this fall at a little distance a beautiful little Island well timbered is situated about the middle of the river. in this Island on a Cottonwood tree an Eagle has placed her nest; a more inaccessible spot I believe she could not have found; for neither man nor beast dare pass those gulphs which separate her little domain from the shores. the water is also broken in such manner as it descends over this pitch that the mist or sprey rises to a considerable height. this fall is certainly much the greatest I ever beheld except those two which I have mentioned below. it is incomparably a greater cataract and a more noble interesting object than the celebrated falls of Potomac or Soolkiln. It is unclear which member of the expedition named the falls, but the expedition called them "Upper Pitch."

The falls were eventually named for the black eagle which Lewis saw on June 14, 1805.

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Immigrant Olav Carl "OC" Seltzer was a longtime Great Falls resident and probably the next most prominent local artist after Charlie Russell.

He painted his interpretation of Captain Meriwether Lewis seeing the black eagle in her nest perched on the falls during their passage through the area and portage of the 5 major waterfalls.

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Captain William F. Raynolds, of the Corps of Topographical Engineers, passing this way in command of a U.S. government expedition in 1860, reported that there was still an eagle's nest in a cottonwood tree on the island. Moreover, he observed a specimen of "this peculiarly American bird" perched in a nearby tree, and thought it might be the very same bird Lewis had seen 55 years before. That is remotely possible, considering at least one captive black eagle is thought to have lived nearly fifty years during the mid-twentieth century, but the average age, even in 1805, was at least somewhat less.

In 1872, Thomas P. Roberts, a survey engineer for the Northern Pacific Railway, formally named the cataract "Black Eagle Falls" after the incident recorded in Lewis' journal.

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The first dam on the site, built and opened in 1890, was a timber-and-rock crib dam. This structure was the first hydroelectric dam built in Montana and the first built on the Missouri River. The dam helped give the city of Great Falls the nickname "The Electric City."

On April 14, 1908, at about 2:30 PM, Hauser Dam—a steel dam about 90 miles upstream from Great Falls— failed. A surge of water 25-30 feet high swept downstream. A Great Northern Railway locomotive was dispatched to the city of Great Falls, warning stations along the way about the dam break. Workers at the Boston and Montana Smelter in Great Falls improvised a wing dam to deflect the floodwaters away from the smelter site and dynamited a portion of Black Eagle Dam to allow the floodwaters to go downstream.

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A second dam, built of concrete in 1926 and opened in 1927, replaced the first dam, which was not removed and lies submerged in the reservoir.

Since 1988, the Long Pool and the Missouri River in and around the city of Great Falls have been listed as an "impaired" waterway under the 1972 Clean Water Act. This area was first listed as impaired due to sedimentation, siltation, and suspended solids in 1988. High levels of chromium, mercury, and selenium were listed as impairing factors in 1992. High turbidity (haziness of water due to suspended particles) was added as an impairing factor in 2000. Sources of these impairments include Black Eagle Dam, upstream abandoned mines, irrigation runoff, industrial sources, and stormwater runoff.

So in the tradition of Martin Litton naming his dories after natural wonders destroyed by the hand of man, I christened her the Black Eagle.

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