The most annoying part of hollowing the log. This is in the stern, and it is an absolute bear to chop through. There are three different knots in the wood in this small area, and the wood that is not knotted is almost sponge-like. The knots are hard to cut through, but once you get started on them, they're not too bad. The spongy wood is the worst though. Personally I've never seen wood do this. It is almost as if it is completely waterlogged, except that it's dry. When you swing into it, instead of splitting, the wood swallows up the blade of the adze or axe, and gives in, like a gummy worm or sponge. Then when you pull the blade out, the wood swells back up to fill the cut. Like I said, the wood seems waterlogged, but it is dry to the touch. Very weird. The only way to work through it is just determination and perseverance.
The dry rot that Gar mentioned earlier in a post. Luckily, the rot does not go all the way to the bottom of the hull, but it is an issue we need to deal with. Because we have several inches to work with, we've decided to leave it be. The worst case scenario we can see is that the rot does not go all the way through, but comes very close and so if we took all of it out, we would end up with a very thin hull. From what we can tell, it runs the length of the hull, so we're thinking that leaving it alone is the best plan.
The almost finished inside. You can see the depth we've hollowed out to. Now the hardest thing will be flattening the sides. From this angle you can see that the hull does not come straight down to the bottom, but instead curves in. We're working to get that curve out. Any wood that stays in the hull that we don't need is extra weight, and also takes away from the space inside the boat for us to sit in.
Because of the questionable weather and the fact that we are carving a hole in the log, we put up a tent over the log so that if it does rain, no water will get into the log and fill it up like a giant bathtub. It's also nice to keep the sun off when we're working, though it does limit our motion a little bit. I've already accidentally put a hole in it from the axe.