Baby Steps

 

I'm making progress on my prototype skin-on-frame canoe.  The canoe in question is 1/2 scale.  Why 1/2 scale?  Well, marine plywood isn't cheap and this model is as much to establish building methods as the feasibility of the design itself.   When I start a design, I usually take the offsets or whatever design I'm working on at the time and create a CAD model.  I'm fortunate that I have a copy of the CAD software that I use at work on a machine at home.  (The user license allows for this...)  Once my design has been created and checked visually on the computer for smooth curves and regular transitions, I usually create a Adobe Acrobat file of the drawing.  These files can be taken to your local print shop on a thumb drive - in my case, a local office supplies store - and printed in full scale on their large format printers.  It's not that expensive, really.  The other thing is that if you're getting multiple patterns from the same drawing, you may want extra copies - they can do that with either by printing more copies or large scale photocopies.

Once the prints have been made, I usually turn them into templates by bonding them to cardboard sheets (NOT corrugated cardboard...) with some spray adhesive.  In this case, I had a choice.  I could have adhered them directly to the plywood that I'd be cutting out, but opted not to in case I wanted to make changes or notes on the templates.

As you may note from my templates, I've only positively identified the location of the keel and sheer stringers on the canoe and will by seeing where the best location is for additional stringers around the turn of the bilge and on the bottom of the hull frame.  Mostly I'm concerned about how the stringers will bend and twist into place at this point.  Also missing are the concave cuts between stringer notches in the sections to provide clearance for the covering fabric once water pressure is exerted on the covering.

 

Tonight I managed to get the plywood sections cut out and ready to put on the strongback.  Earlier today, I made a trip to my conveniently located lumberyard and picked up a 2x4 for the strongback and a few pieces of poplar to be stringers, mounting blocks and floor-boards.  On the real boat, this will probably be pine or cedar for rot resistance, but for now, that's not an issue on the model After I got the lumber strapped to the car's roof rack, one wag at work commented on how fast and straight the trees grew on my car roof. 

More to come...

Well, we'll see...

 

I always tend to describe myself as being like a 40 watt bulb - I'm not necessarily the brightest, but I won't burn out prematurely like one of those fancy extra-bright halogen ones...  So, being the Bear of Little Brain, I have been in my Thotful Spot again.

While I love teaching my cedar-strip canoe building class, there are some concerns.  Chief among them is the cost and duration of the class - it is about $600-700 for materials and takes at least four, 14 week class sessions (time and $$$ both being a factor here...) for most students to complete a boat.  This makes the class too expensive, and quite a commitment in terms of time.  Also, it requires a bit of woodworking experience up-front or more build time to learn those woodworking skills.  It's not that they are particularly difficult to learn, it's just that the skills need to be acquired - and that takes more time.  

I'm looking to do something different.

I have several goals.  I want to be building boats that will be...

• small and lightweight
• inexpensive
• quick to build
• less demanding of builder's skills

To that end, I've been working on some Thomas Yost style skin-on-frame kayaks to gain more experience with this sort of building style.  Another person who has taken this idea and run with it is Dave Gentry.  He's got a variety of nicely done skin-on-frame canoes and kayaks and has done both reproductions of classic craft as well as some of his own designs.  I could definitely see doing some of his designs in a class like this.

After building the Yost-style kayaks, I've learned some things that I don't like about Yost's building method.  It's difficult to get the patterns square and perpendicular.  I did, however come up with a solution to this issue and would be comfortable to be building a boat like this in class.  Still, I'm a canoe guy - I like kayaks, but prefer to paddle canoes.  So, I've been working to develop a design of my own.

The image below shows the germ of the idea.  It is still missing some critical features, but the majority of it is there.  These are plywood stations for a non-traditional solo skin-on-frame canoe. 

 

They can easily be copied by a relatively inexperienced woodworker from master patterns using a router and a pattern bit.  It's a 13' long asymmetrical solo double-paddle canoe.  It's about 28" wide, has slight rocker, a little tumble-home to the sides and a shallow arch for a bottom.  The thing that I feel makes my design a bit different is that I'm using the stations themselves as the fixturing to assure that they are square and perpendicular to the main axis of the canoe.  After the stringers have been installed, the 'frame' part of the stations will be cut free from the 'fixturing' part of the stations to release the boat for finishing and skinning.  I'm even toying with the idea of integrating grab handles into the last two stations for carrying the boat (by two people...).  I'm concerned that even with the light weight of the canoe, a bit more or wider material would be desirable for comfort.

I have some more design work to validate the shape's stability and am working on a 1/2 scale model to figure out the construction details.  I think this is going to be interesting!

Tech Tip Tuesday

If you look at some of my posts, one of the common labels that you will see is "Devil is in the details..." I think that the best canoes are those where the builder has thought ahead to how they want the canoe to look when it is finished. Often, the new builder is so wrapped up in what they are doing at the moment, that they're not thinking ahead to the finishing details.

The choices are only limited by your imagination. The variety is really mind-boggling if you think about it too much. There are lots of good examples of how to finish your canoe's details by looking at both classic and modern canoes - it's a matter of taste, really. Pictures can be found by searching online for images using "canoe bow" and "canoe deck".

After the hull is finished and 'glassed, the trim needs to go on. For our small solo canoes, this typically includes the seat, a thwart, decks and gunwales. For those that like the woodwork a bit fancier or are concerned about shipping water over the deck (a serious concern in small canoes with low freeboard) a coaming - a curved lip at the back of the deck to help deflect water away from the inside of the boat is a good idea.


Another good thing to add to the canoe is a footrest. This helps as you paddle the canoe to give something to push against. Often, this is just a stick parallel to the front edge of the seat and tied to the front edge of the seat.

The other concern that people have a hard time figuring out is how to tie a rope to the bow and stern of the canoe. This is important for several reasons. First, you need to be able to tie your boat down to the top of your car to transport it. You also will want to tie the boat up so it doesn't float away from a dock or beach. You may also want to be able to "line" the boat through shallow water where the bottom is too muddy to walk along beside your canoe. This needs to be secure as the forces on your canoe - particularly on the car - can be high as it is going down the highway. You definitely don't want your hand-made boat to go flying off. (See my previous post on transporting boats here.)

There are lots of ways to attach a line to the front of the canoe. You can put in a ferrule like the one below:


It is a hole drilled through the bow of the boat that is lined with a piece of brass or bronze tubing that has rounded edges to keep from chafing the line. It is simple and effective, but you need to do a good job sealing to avoid having a place for water to get in and to rot the wood of the canoe.

A simple way to attach a line and to have a good place to carry the canoe is to add a grab handle at the bow and stern - it just needs to be comfortably rounded - like the one below:


Brass or Stainless quarter round stock can also be purchased and formed around the stem and stern of the canoe. As with the hole through the bow, this needs to be well sealed as you will be screwing into the wood of the stem. The benefit is that it helps to protect the bow from abrasion. Often, as seen below, this metal strip is bent over the top of the deck. Sometimes, a loop is formed at the apex for a painter ring to tie on a rope.


Older boat designs like the B.N. Morris below had custom hardware like the diamond painter ring mounts and the flag socket.


Hardware was often vendor specific, as can be seen from the Old Town painter rings below:


Personally, I don't like the painter rings as they bang around on the boat damaging the deck unless there is something to protect the deck. To avoid the loose rings, a solid pad eye can be screwed down to the deck. Along with another version with a loose painter ring, here are 5 different versions:


There IS a reason that stuff like this is known as "canoe jewelry". Pretty, isn't it?

It is also possible to mount hidden hardware beneath the deck - such a a brass, bronze or wooden cleat below the deck. Most people are familiar with a "horn cleat" which looks like this:


Don't let this limit you, however - there are many other types of cleats, such as the very art-deco streamlined cleats here:


Canoe hardware is smaller than that found on most other boats and can be a bit hard to find at an appropriate scale. Be sure to keep that in mind as you look.

Where do you look? Well, that's up to you.

You can make your own wooden hardware from unusual hardwoods - ebony, hard maple, etc. If you've made the boat, how hard can the hardware be?

You can also cast your own brass or bronze hardware. Really. I'm serious. There are classes out there where you can learn to make patterns and actually cast your own parts. If you want something specific, it isn't a bad way to go. Alternatively, you can cut, file and polish parts out of brass - it's fairly soft metal and machines easily. You can also contract the manufacture of custom hardware. One source is the Springfield Fan Centerboard Company which is known for reproduction canoe hardware - including articulated fan centerboards similar to the Radix boards used in sailing canoes of the late 1800's.

You can buy old or antique hardware from dealers, too. One source is a company called Ross Brothers who are active WCHA members. The WCHA also has a list of vendors for canoe building vendors and material suppliers on their website.

New hardware is also available from a variety of vendors. Among them are Hamilton Marine, West Marine, Jamestown Distributors, Bristol Bronze and TenderCraft Boat Shop.

Just remember, you're only limited by your imagination!

The Canoe Gods and Penance.

In some previous posts, I've alluded to two B.N. Morris canoes that I've done restoration work on. There's a bit more story to tell about the first one.

The first Morris that I dealt with was a canoe that belonged to my Scoutmaster when I was a teenager. While I don't know what particular model it was, it looked like the one in the picture above and had belonged to someone in his wife's family. (The one in the picture is a reproduction from the Northwoods Canoe Company) The canoe had Mahogany trim all over. This boat was in pretty nice shape with the exception of the rot that seems to be typical on the ends of the stems at the bow and stern and the canvas was shot. I should point out that the B.N. Morris canoes had closed gunnels like in the picture below:


This allowed the water trapped in the canoe when it was stored upside-down to travel down to the tips of the stems and cause rot in this area. I should note that most people are more familiar with open gunwale canoes like the Old Town in the picture below. Water can come out through the scuppers created by the spacing that the ribs create between the inwale and the outwale. A little bit more to follow on this detail later.


My father offered to help him restore this canoe for a trip that we were planning in the summer. We started off by removing the rotten wood and scarfing in new sections of Cedar ribs, stem, inwale and planking. Some new pieces of Mahogany were scarfed to the ends of the trim pieces that covered the top of the gunwales and made up the outwale. We also had to scarf in some sections of new deck. Once the woodwork was done, we stripped the old varnish and re-varnished the interior. Seat cane was replaced and new floorboards (AKA "duckboards") were fabricated.

Now comes the sin.

I should note that canoes with closed gunwales like the Morris are very "early" designs. Bert N. Morris started building canoes in his home in Veazie Maine around 1882 and finally opened a successful factory there. It was one of the largest canoe companies with a widely known name until a fire destroyed the factory in 1920. After the fire, some canoes were still built under the Morris name for a short time, but as I understand it, ultimately Morris went to work for the Old Town canoe company. The canoe we were working on was both very old and sought after. Other than the small amount of rot at the tips, it was really in pretty pristine shape.

Right until we fiber-glassed it.

Fiberglass should really never be put on a traditional rib and plank canoe. It's just not right. For the most part, I have to say, "Forgive us, because we really didn't know any better." -the owner and my father didn't really know this at the time and figured that they were saving the canoe. I know my father had expressed some interest in re-canvasing the canoe, but the owner figured that the fiberglass was a final solution. (It is, but not for the best...) Worse still, we used forest green tinted Polyester resin. I can still smell the Styrene. Overall, we did a pretty good job with the Polyester and the canoe looked and paddled OK, but it was still the wrong thing to do.

I figure that due to this event in my past, I am doing my penance to the Canoe Gods by researching, building, and writing about traditional and semi-traditional wooden canoes. One of the reasons that I took a Cedar and Canvas Canoe building class at WoodenBoat School was to do a good job of restoring the second Morris Canoe that I've gotten my hands on - a boat I found by the side of the road with some rot at the tips and pink Polyester resin on the outside!

Decisions, Decisions, continued...

Well, I'm narrowing things down a bit and am looking at designs that are offered by the folks at Bear Mountain Boats, Ted Moores' business. Most of these are based on older designs by Chestnut, a well known Canadian canoe manufacturer and have been re-drawn by Steve Killing.

I had been looking at the Cheemaun design by Rollin Thurlow up at the Northwoods Canoe Company and the Ami by Alex Comb at Stewart River Boatworks. These two designs are really intended for wood and canvas canoe construction, but they could be built as cedar strip canoes with a little bit of change to the forms. (Alex actually had the design to the outside of the hull, which is what you need for strip built.) However, I think I'll save these for the time when I build in wood and canvas.

The designs that I seem to be coming back to are the Prospector Ranger, the Freedom 15 and the Bob's Special. ALL of these are 15' long canoes that will be about 45 or 50 pounds and have similar prismatic coefficients and wetted area. The Freedom has a very modern appearance, relatively flat bottom and flat sheer line, but has a higher prismatic coefficient and wetted area - which will yield a slower boat. I like the underwater shape of the Prospector Ranger a bit better than the Bob's Special, but think that the bow and stern on the Ranger are a bit high and will likely catch the wind. This, however isn't a death knell - it's not that hard to lower the sheer a bit in the ends.



Could be a toss up, but I think the Ranger will feel more stable.

Decisions, Decisions

One of the things that I find myself doing before my class starts up is reviewing my tools, forms and procedures to see if there is anything that I can be doing to improve the class for the students.

This year, I've got a bit of a dilemma.

I have two couples who would like to build tandem canoes. This brings up some logistical issues:

• Bigger boats and forms need to be moved out of the shop and into the barn on a weekly basis. They are heavier and more awkward to deal with than a Wee Lassie.
• Bigger boats require longer stock. We like to rip full length stock, so we're looking at 16' boards.
• Bigger boats are more expensive.
• Because we move the boats on a weekly basis, the strongback has to be rigid. I'm considering some lightweight box-beam designs for a change.
  

In practical terms, I would like to get the students' input on the selection of the canoe. There are a handful of good canoe designs in the 15' range that I'm looking at, but they have distinctly different paddling characteristics. Picture having someone else pick out the car you're going to drive without knowing very much about your driving abilities and how you'll use the vehicle - without doing a test-drive themselves! For this reason, I'm looking at boats which are based on "tried-and-true" designs such as the Bob's Special, which is based on an old Chestnut design and several others which are based on Peterborough designs.

The other important consideration here is the protection of a designer's intellectual property - taking a copyrighted design will require a royalty to be paid for each design - or sometimes, a price for the first design and a smaller licensing fee for the additional boats.

Anybody got any good ideas?

Details, details...

When we finally get the bottom of the canoe glued together, it is now time to pay attention to the stems. The picture above shows what we normally end up with after stripping. If we had taken pains to finish the stripping very carefully at the bow and stern, we could proceed to fairing and fiberglassing the hull. I like to have my students do one more step and to laminate an outer stem made from hardwood. I think it is a better-looking and more professional detail. I prefer hardwood here because this area - particularly the bow - bears the brunt of any impacts the boat might have. While the fiberglass and epoxy coating on the outside of the canoe is very flexible, and generally will spring back from an impact, the soft cedar of the hull (or stem material) will crush and not come back to it's original shape. This causes a delamination of the fiberglass and epoxy from the wood and generally requires a bit of repair. Hardwood stems tend not to crush as easily and provide for a more durable buffer.


The first thing I like to do is to find out where the end of the inner stems are located along the keel. You can either mark this position before you bond the football in place (note the pencil mark in the picture above - top right...) or you can come out from the line of staple holes at the station nearest the stem and mark a distance of about 1-1/2" towards the end of the canoe. The reason is that you are about to make a cut into the hull to accept the stem and you want to make sure you will be having the inner stem behind your cut. The inner stem hides this cut when you come through the hull, so it will not be seen from the interior. I like to cut down into the hull at an angle as shown above. (The reason is solely cosmetic. You could just cut straight down, but I think you'll like the detail shown in the last picture. ) I then stop cutting when I reach the inner stem. This cut is usually made with a chisel.


Another view - note the lighter colored wood of the stem.


This cut is then extended along the hull up towards the sheer line. I am trying to accomplish three things here. First, I want to have the width be fairly uniform (within about an 1/8" or so) when viewed from the end. I also want it to be a smooth, fair curve when viewed in profile. Last, but not least. I want the "flat" of the rabbet to be perpendicular to the main axis of the canoe so that the stem isn't twisted when it is laminated in place. The canoe shown in these pictures is a Wee Lassie II, designed by Mac McCarthy. I have a small problem with the way the bow and stern are designed, because the profile gives a section that is a bit wide at the bend. This leaves us with a hollow when trying to keep the width constant. This area gets filled with wood flour, epoxy and fumed silica made into a peanut butter consistancy. The stems are then laminated in place after the epoxy cures and is cleaned up. A bevel that matches the cut in the picture above is sanded into the end of a stack of thin strips. A hole is drilled for a small wire nail near the top of the curve to keep the stack of glue-slick strips from sliding. A cleat is installed under the strongback to wrap inner tubes around. With the pack of strips glued up, it is installed and the inner tubes hold the stem together while the glue cures. Note the spring clamp that was used to keep the strips from sliding side to side. Handy.


The picture below shows the end result when you're done fairing and glassing the hull - what you see is a neat little arrow-head detail that I think is pretty sharp-looking. It is particularly impressive when you have contrasting woods for the stem and the hull.

*OUT OF SPACE ERROR*

In my canoe building class, I teach people to build Mac McCarthy's design of the Wee Lassie and Wee Lassie II canoes.

There is a reason for that.

At the school where I teach the class, the workshop is fairly small and is in the basement of the building. The basement is reached via a set of stairs from a lobby and you have to make some fairly interesting turns to get a strongback down into the shop. Across the parking lot from the building is a small barn. In this barn, we get to store materials and boats in progress. This is important as we cannot leave the boats in the shop during the week as it would interfere with other classes, and it would be too difficult for my students to schlep their materials back and forth every week.

The Wee Lassie is about 11'-6" long and the Wee Lassie II is about 13'-6" long. Both boats are 28" wide. The Wee Lassie II gets down into the basement with a bit of difficulty. Once all the material has been milled, we move aside some of the power tools and can just fit 6 canoes in the shop to work on them.

Just.

I've had a student who purchased plans for a Newfound Woodworks Osprey kayak. It's roughly a 16' long, 24" wide kayak. I have real concerns about getting the boat in and out of the shop. Also, because of the differences in the form from a canoe, I've got serious concerns about storing it. It's a neat project, and I think it would be fun to work on, but I think it is too big and too "different" of a project to try to wedge into the class. I worry that it will be a distraction. Kayak builds are also much more involved and I don't think that the student could finish the boat in the allotted time. I've got some plans for some smaller kayaks and would like to propose them, but I still think that building a kayak in a class for canoes would still be an issue.

Osprey

I have yet another student who purchased plans for a Sandy Point Boatworks Bufflehead canoe. At 14'-6" and 33" wide, it pushes the limits of size, but not technique. We'll have to see if we can fit

Bufflehead

If you're tempted to build a cedar strip kayak, I highly recommend Ted Moores' book Kayak Craft - a thorough study on the subject. Also, Newfound Woodworks and other sources have great DVD's to walk you through the process.

One of each, Please!

I've got a goal. I guess you could say that it's one of those goals that makes you say you've bitten off more than you can chew.

I'd like to build small craft in all of the various construction methods used for wooden canoes, kayaks and small skiffs. It's a tall order, really.

I've done cedar-strip and fiberglass construction on both small and large canoes. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. Have helped build a small fleet (yes, fleet) of Wee Lassie and Wee Lassie II canoes to Mac McCarthy's designs, a Redbird to Ted Moores design, a Wabnaki to Gil Gilpatrick's plans, and a sea kayak who's name I don't recall. I've literally helped cut miles of cedar, redwood and sassafrass strips.

A Wee Lassie (Not mine...)

I've done restorations on a number of cedar and canvas canoes, but have never built one from scratch. I've replaced ribs, planking, stems, seat frames, decks, thwarts and canvas on a variety of this type of canoe. I've worked on what we suspect is a Chestnut, a Grand Laker, an Old Town Otca and two BN Morris canoes. I suspect that the one of the reasons that I'm actually into building canoes the way I am is paying penance to the Canoe Gods - I once participated in the fiberglassing of a classic BN Morris canoe that was in quite excellent shape. It's sort of a sin and I figure all my suffering through other boats is the pay-back. I would like to build one from scratch - forms and all, but I think I'd like to go take a class with a pro before I approach the intricacies of shaping cant ribs, and goring planks.

A restored 1916 Otca

I'd also like to do skin-on-frame canoes and kayaks. Quite frankly, they look like a heck of a lot of fun and not all that demanding. People seem to be gun-shy about the durability of this kind of boat, but they seem to be quite robust, really. The really impressive part about these boats is how incredibly light they are and how incredibly beautiful they can be.

Two Skin on Frame Canoes
From the Berkshire Boat Building School

I built a lapstrake canoe with my father to Tom Hill's Charlotte design. It was an interesting process and once the strongback, forms and ribbands were in place, it was quite quick to build. My father did the beveling of the stems and he seemed to make quite a meal of the process for some reason. I also couldn't seem to convince him to thicken the epoxy we were using for the seams with Cab-O-Sil, which would have made things much easier. I'm going to build my own boat by myself to apply those lessons that I've learned. I think I'll wind up with a nicer boat. I want to try more boats in this style.

Tom Hill's Charlotte
Thomas J. Hill Boat Designs

I'd like to try a tack-and-tape or stitch-and-glue style boat - either a canoe or kayak. Mik Storer's Beth looks particularly interesting to me. It's a sailing canoe and it looks to be quite the hot-rod with a huge amount of sail for a small canoe. I'm also interested in this method because of the relative simplicity and low cost. Newfound Woodworks has a small Wee Lassie style canoe kit to be built by this method. I think some of the people who've been intimidated by my cedar strip class might be interested in trying this and it might be more affordable.

Mik Storer's Beth

Now just to let you know about the "bitten off more than you can chew part", there are more ways than this to build small boats. Plank on frame and cold-molded come immediately to mind, but certainly aren't the only other ways... Anybody think I'm crazy yet? I know I certainly think I am.