From: "M. Mansker"
Help! I am building by first project, a 17' Micmac from your book. I need to know seat placement from the ENDS of the canoe; your book just gives measurements from the tip of the football, but I didn't use the football, since I felt more comfortable working from the gunnel clear around to the keel strip.
Ours is a family canoe, with 5 paddlers (plus a variety of friends, cousins, etc that go camping with us here in the Sisters, Oregon area. I will be the most frequent stern paddler, and am 6'2" and 240 pounds. Bow paddlers will range from friends my size to my 8 year old 60 pound son. I am sure my 8 year old and his 11 year old brother will go out themselves too. Can you help?
Dear Mike,
In your situation, you will probably be best off mounting the front edges of the two seats equidistant from the center of the canoe, and any great imbalances caused by differences in weight between paddlers can be offset with ballast of some sort, like a small sandbag. So give the bow seat 36" of leg room, and mount the stern seat (front edge) equidistant from the center of the boat. See the drawing at the bottom of page 53 in The Stripper's Guide. "A" and "B" should be the same. OK?
David
Mike replied:
Thanks for the quick response. I follow everything you said, but hoped for a measurement from the stem to the bow seat, not being comfortable sitting in it on my basement floor to figure out how much "Footroom" goes on the front of the "legroom" to get the total distance from the seat to the stem.
Dear Mike,
Measure 48" from the inside of the junction of the two sides, at the front edge of the hypothetical "stem." A traditional stem would be a vertical, bent piece of wood that the side strips are fastened to. In my building method, the stem is used as a form, and then removed.
I would always have installed an air chamber in the ends of my boats before installing the seats, so that measurement was not accessible to me, so I measured 36" from the base of the air chamber panel, or the end of the football, which were basically the same. I derived the 48" by measuring the plans.
The 36" legroom was originally a decision made by sitting on a mockup (you're right, don't sit in your canoe!) of the situation, a low stool or box of the approximate height of the canoe seats, and measuring from its front edge to the bottom of my feet (I'm about 6'1"), my wife's feet (she's about 5'4"), and going for the longer distance. You could do the same.
Hope this makes sense to you.
David
This cover photo for The Stripper's Guide to Canoe-building
features one of David's 18' Micmacs on Trillium Lake near Mt. Hood, Oregon.
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If you have a question about woodstrip canoes, send me an e-mail (details at the bottom of this page), and I'll try my best to answer. If you don't get a reply right away, it means I'm on vacation and will write as soon as I return.
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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