Carpow Logboat

3000 year old solid oak bending at almost 90 degrees

The National Museums of Scotland have been working on the excavation, recovery and conservation of a 3,000 year old Carpow Logboat. They have used Curvomatic to build formers to reshape a Neolithic oak logboat that was found waterlogged on the Tay estuary.


"Here are some workshop photo’s of some of the bending in action.The logboat has to be heated with industrial heating blankets , we get the wood up to core temperature of about 70-80 degress c, remove the blankets and apply the curvomatic former. 

It has worked really well and the beauty is that we can remake the formers very quickly to suit the areas which we wanted to bend. It is really strong and robust and we have managed to some really tight bends. One gunwhale of the boat (top right) has had to bent almost 90 degrees, previously this was almost a flat piece"



Charles Stable, National Museums of Scotland