Tom Colvin Makes A Pirogue

A few years ago, around 1995, Tom Colvin of Mandeville, a renowned cypress woodworker, visited Abita Springs Elementary School and demonstrated for the students how to build a pirogue the old-fashioned way, by carving it out of a tree trunk. 

The students were quite impressed with his expertise, so much so that they wrote descriptive accounts of the pirogue-building procedure and published it in a booklet, with the help of their teachers. Here are the pages from that booklet, entitled "Mr. Tom Colvin Makes a Pirogue."

Click here to view a PDF copy of the entire booklet. 

To see individual pages, click on the images below to make them larger. 

 

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Tom also has an extensive background in Choctaw Indian basket weaving techniques. 

 

Tom Colvin making a basket at the "Our Heritage Celebration" in 1986

He even published a booklet showing how those baskets were made.