If you go back and read what I said carefully, you will read,
" Its a technique that was used by boat builders to seal wooden boats". I never said they use Paper in covering a boat. I talked about the technique.
The Old Town Canoe has been make with canvas, coated in a white lead paint compound, which when dried seals the canvas and the underlying wood. That canoe has been made for more than 150 years.
More recently, " Stripper " canoes are made with light weight cedar strakes, covered with fiberglass cloth, and sealed using epoxy resin. It produces a lighter weight canoe than the Old Town Canoe, and has the advantage of sealing the wood between layers of epoxy that make the canoe waterproof, and allows it to float even when filled with water. ( due to the displacement of water by the cedar strakes trapped between the layers of epoxy).
Extra pieces of canvas, or fiberglass cloth are used to strengthen areas of the keel and bow where the ( Old Town)boat is likely to strike rocks, or run over gravel bottoms. Stripper canoes are layered with epoxy. The canvas canoe was layered in canvas, and " glued " in place with more of the lead paint. Alternatively, the Old Town canoes had heavy metal cleets and rails attached to the bow, and to the keel and bottom of the boat to protect the boat from abrasion on rocks, and gravel.
The same kind of metal rail system can often be found on the earlier Adirondack Guide boats, and even earlier designed ocean rowboats made with lapstrakes, and pitch, that were run up onto gravel or coarse sand beaches.
Pitch was used by American Indians and settlers to glue layered patches on birchbark canoes. The patches would eventually be sewn on the cover using Spruce roots, which in turn would be sealed with pine pitch.
The techique involves adding wood to wood, and how it is done is not unique. For original rifles to be used in International competition, they cannot be re-bedded using epoxies, but they can be re-bedded using paper or cardboard, and any kind of sealer. Varnish is the most popular, simply because its been around so long, But Shellac, and lacquer have also been used.
These are wood working problems, and wood workers borrowed solutions from other wood workers, no matter what those other wood worker were making, or doing. My reference to boat builders was nothing more than a simple note that these ideas are not unique to gun makers, but were being used in other wood working industries, whenever needed. :hatsoff: