The double-hull canoe's size is not very impressive.

"Medium small," Junior Coleman said yesterday, not bothering to look up as he went about his work in Bishop Museum's Hawaiian Hall. "A coastal canoe, maybe interisland on a good day."

But the gleaming 20-foot, solid koa vessel is more than 100 years old, a treasure of Hawaiian heritage.

It could skim the ocean at about 10 knots, Coleman said, with 180- to 200- square feet of sail, although it probably has never taken the waters.

"Sailed? Not that I know of," Coleman said. "If I had the opportunity, I would take it out for a spin."

Coleman, who took a spin to Tahiti as a crew member of Hokule'a in 1995, is in charge of restoring the canoe for display when the museum's Hawaiian Hall reopens in August, following its own restoration.

Coleman, of Waimanalo, is a teacher and cultural education specialist at Halau Lokahi Charter School in Kalihi. His pedigree in such matters is top notch, having learned canoe-building skills from Wright Bowman Jr., who built the Polynesian Voyaging Society's canoe Hawai'iloa, and navigational skills from the peerless Mau Piailug of Satawal island.

He says the canoe was built for the museum by Samuel Kipi and William Nahi, and delivered in 1908.

"I've never seen a double hull this old," Coleman said.

And koa canoes? "Not double hull," he said, "I have seen some single hulls."

He described the canoe as "an important part of our cultural heritage."

Yesterday he was being assisted by his former student, Grayson Kauwe, who graduated from Halau Lokahi last year.

Kauwe was very quiet as he worked on the canoe.

The imposing Hawaiian Hall, which is also built all of koa, with its stone gods and ancient artifacts, seems to demand a certain stillness.

When asked about learning of the old ways with Coleman, Kauwe said: "We've been away from our land and our culture for so long. When we get to learn about our culture, we're hungry for it."

Coleman said part of the special enjoyment of working on the canoe was using hand tools instead of power tools. He said it was therapeutic, that it gave a certain sense of serenity. He feels the same way about sailing the Pacific aboard Hokule'a, which he described as "very humbling."

"You get a tremendous amount of respect for the ocean, the environment and our ancestors," he said. "It puts things into perspective."

Perhaps the thousands of visitors who see the koa canoe in the renovated hall will gain insight into that majestic past, of the intrepid people who sailed thousands of miles of unknown seas using the moon and the stars, the currents and the waves to guide them.

The koa canoe had been in storage for decades. Bishop spokeswoman Donalyn Dela Cruz said the museum had no estimate of its worth.

"It's priceless," she said.