The beginning: on our way home from our canoe trip around the San Juan Islands with our old 18' Micmac, we stopped at Flounder Bay Boat Lumber in Anacortes, Washington, to pick up resin, cloth, and some 22' planks of western red cedar. Bob and Erica Pickett (on the left, that's me on the right) are old friends, and we were glad to see them once again.
The jig: This flourescent, incandescent, and daylight-lit photo (psychedelic, huh?) shows all the station forms aligned. The mahogany plywood transom is mounted on the stern stem form, and the voids in the edges of the plywood have little cedar sticks glued into them.
I will need a long-shaft motor, since the top edge of the transom is 20" above the keel. The height of the transom that I made is 11" and the width is a mere 9". I laid out the curvature for one edge with a flexible french curve, cut it on a bandsaw, and flipped over the waste to trace the same curve on the other edge.
Jobst Vandrey has an extended evaluation of the alternatives for auxiliary power.
Stripping: The sides are stripped with 1/4" red cedar. The bottom of the canoe will be stripped with 5/16" Port Orford cedar. A 2' tapered strip at the stern (second one down from the top strip) compensates for the extra area needed for the shape of the transom, and brings the line of the stripping back up to level.
The football: The Port Orford cedar came in pieces 12' long, 5-1/2" wide, and 15/16" thick. The longest strip I needed for the bottom was 17' 9". First, I ripped the lumber into two 2-1/4" pieces so the scarfs would not consume so much length, and then I scarfed those pieces into 20' lengths with a 1:8 taper, and ripped that lumber into strips the next day. It took about ten hours to fit in this much of the bottom strips. The Port Orford is much denser and harder to cut than Western Red cedar.
Glassing: I've sanded the boat and applied a sealer of System Three Clear Coat. For the first time in my life, I mis-mixed the hardener/resin ratio in a batch of resin. The hardener should be 33% of the mixture, and I believe I made it 40%, which is a 7% error. The System Three Epoxy Book states there is room enough for a 10% error, so everything turned out OK in spite of my initial panic.
Now comes the glassing. The Clear Coat saturates the cloth quickly, and is easy to work with.
Turning over: After waiting several days for the resin to cure, I've finished sanding the filler coats of resin, and today the canoe was "birthed," light and wiggly, and placed in its cradle, a joy to behold, my "baby whale." I'm 'way down there at the other end, Greg is helping me on the near end. On the floor are about half of the forms, which were removed from the jig before attempting to lift off the boat.
Greg Tatman is my part-time boss, and he has very graciously provided space for me to work in his driftboat shop (Thanks, Greg!)
The Stripper's Guide to Canoe-building by David Hazen is available from:
Copyright 1998, David Hazen. You may download, store, or print a single copy of this page for your personal information. No part of this material may be reproduced, stored or transmitted for personal gain.
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