The gunwales of the Algonkin canoes were made up of three members--main gunwales, outwales, and caps. The main gunwales, usually of cedar, were rectangular in cross section and bent on the flat. The lower outboard corner was bevelled off to take the rib ends, as in the Malecite canoes. The gunwales were rather light ranging in the examples found from about 1 inch square to 1 by 1⅝ inches, the ends being tapered to a lesser size. The outwales were light battens, rectangular in cross-section, about as deep as the main gunwales and about two-thirds their thickness or less; they tapered in depth toward the ends to ⅜ or ½ inch in order to follow the sheer, while the thickness might be constant or only slightly reduced. The caps, which were pegged to the gunwales, were also light and were about equal to the combined width of the main gunwales and outwales and had a depth of about ⅜ to ½ inch amidships. At the ends they were tapered in both width and depth, becoming ½ inch wide and ⅜ inch deep. The amount of taper in the ends of the gunwale members depended upon the form of sheer; the Algonkin practice in the old form of canoe was to sheer the outwales and caps to the top of the stem, while the gunwales sheered less and met the sides of the stem piece at a lower point, as in the drawing (p. 116). In the _wabinaki chiman_, however, the gunwales and other members, as a rule, all followed the sheer of the ends of the canoe. [Illustration: Figure 111 ALGONKIN CANOE, OLD TYPE.] The Algonkins used inside stem-pieces in both models, but the stem-piece of the old high-ended canoe was quite different from that of the _wabinaki chiman_, for it was built to give a profile in which the top of the high stem ended in a line straight across to the sheer. The piece consisted of a crooked stick, without lamination, worked out of a thin board, ⅜ to ½ inch thick. It was shaped to the desired profile inside and out, and was slightly sharpened, or sometimes rabbeted and sharpened, toward the outboard face. The headboard was mounted on this stem-piece by means of the usual notch but was not bellied; instead it stood approximately vertical and a short strut was tenoned into both the headboard and the inside face of the stem at a point about half the height of the stem. Sometimes two struts were used, side by side, with the outboard ends lashed at the sides of the stem. Thus the stem-pieces and headboards were placed as a single unit, not independently as in eastern canoes. The gunwale ends were lashed to the sides of the stem-piece, between the strut and the stem-head, at a height determined by the sheering of the main gunwale members. The outwales and caps did not touch the stem-piece, ending with a nearly vertical upward sweep, a few inches inboard. The ends of the outwales and caps were always higher than the top of the stem-piece so that, when the canoe was turned upside down, the bark cover over the stem-head was kept off the ground and thus preserved from damage.