The canvas skin had a dirty, aged appearance and showed the damage and scrapes from the arctic ice and repairs done by Nansen and Johansen (patches and re-sewn seams). Otherwise the skin was in good condition. The skin is canvas, originally waterproofed by steeping it in a mixture of paraffin and tallow and later patched with oil paint and soot mixed with melted blubber. All this waterproofing made the kayak heavy. Nansen reported it to be 41 pounds with the skin accounting for 25 pounds of the weight.

Three hatches in the deck gave access to the equipment stored inside. They were made by leaving a circular hole in the deck canvas with a loose tube of canvas cloth sewn to the perimeter of the hole. The hatch could be closed much like a dry bag: rolled or folded back onto itself and tied off with a cord. As the kayak rode high on the sea, water getting on deck and collecting into the hatches' depressions would not have been much of an issue. Sticking my head inside, I found that the kayak was stinky and full of dust. It was easy to imagine the sweat, blood, blubber, grease, sea salt and soot that must have had their turn inside. For a kayak that had been through what Nansen and Johansen did to their kayaks and then aged more than a hundred years, Fram no. 171 had considerably little structural damage. There were no loose pieces inside. Some loose bamboo fibers fell out during the survey, and these were respectfully placed back in the kayak after we were done.

The bamboo frame lashed with cord was built using transverse frames holding the stringers instead of traditional ribs. Anyone familiar with George Dyson's aluminum baidarka designs will recognize the structure. Most of the frame members are straight except the gunwales, the stringers and the one deck beam at the front of the cockpit. There are no mortises. The transverse frames are secured to the gunwales and the stringers by lashings going through a hole drilled in the rib (to keep its position) and wrapped around each side of the joint to hold it together.

The only pieces of the frame that are not made of bamboo are the cockpit coaming and the bow and stern pieces. The coaming is made from a bent strip of 12 mm x 40 mm wood, joined by metal rivets, with three separated bone pieces of 5 mm x 12 mm x 23.5 mm making a sprayskirt lip. In keeping with Greenland style, it's attached to the skin and not the frame. The bow piece is 44 cm long and is at 35 degrees from vertical. The stern is 40 cm long and at 22 degrees.

There are a number of places where the bamboo broke and was repaired. Nansen wrote that at one point when they were sure of being close to open water, they stopped their march across the ice and took a few weeks to make their kayaks seaworthy again. They took the skins off and repaired any holes. Johansen's frame had to be splinted a number of times on the gunwales and the stringers, which I was able to see in two places on the aft section.

Because bamboo does not come in regular widths, as does sawn lumber, each piece of the frame is a slightly different size. Also, bamboo's width is not uniform through its length. It grows in sections, each separated by a nodule ring and tapering in between. In spite of this, Fram no. 171's members are of a fairly consistent size, and a fair generalization can be made as to the size in width of each piece.

Exhibited with Fram no. 171 was the sledge used to haul the kayaks and their gear over the ice. I didn't have time to survey it, although I wish I had. There was no paddle displayed with the kayak. Nansen reports using a canvas-bladed paddle lashed to a bamboo stick. There are no photographs, but I would guess that it was similar to one used by Nansen in Greenland when he built an improvised skin-on-frame rowboat to take him down the Ameralik fjord on the last stage of his crossing-a Y-fork supporting a canvas blade. These paddles were found to be too short for use when the two kayaks were lashed together side-by-side for long crossings. Improved paddles were made with shafts of bamboo snowshoe staffs lashed to blades made of broken-off wooden skis, which would look something like an improvised Greenland paddle.