Cedar Strip Canoe Build...

There are TWO builds? Another on the wall?

That canoe is the one my friend built ~8 years ago. It is gorgeous.
It was built off of the same forms as the one we built, though we cut the tops of the ends a bit shorter, so it does not rise up quite as much at the ends.
Still, it should perform the same in the water.
 
Jun 25 Canoe Progress.

I was unable to make it last Saturday, so no photos from the 21st. There was some sanding done, so nothing really would show up as different in photographs anyway…

Came in to find a bit of of a problem tonight:


About seven inches of the outwale joint let go at the one end. Possibly we starved the joint a bit, or possibly we just did not quite get enough epoxy into it. Oh well, it was a small setback that was fairly easy to fix. First we cleaned out the joint a bit.


Then we mixed up some epoxy + cabosil. (Cabosil is a silica filler for thickening the epoxy.)


And filled the joint and clamped it (with a screw) back into position.


June 25 CONTINUED….
 
June 25 CONTINUED….

Meanwhile, I got busy on the drillpress…


My buddy picked up one of these bad boys for drilling the bolt holes through the seat supports… That is one long drillbit. The problem is that we only have small benchtop drillpresses in this shop. As well, the holes in the seat blocks are not nice right-down-the-centre holes. Most of them go off on an angle a bit, since the seat blocks themselves are installed on the angle.


So, the way we approached this is to make up a guide block. We had a piece of stock the same thickness as the seat blocks, about two inches long. Then we drilled a hole right down the centre of it on the drillpress, as show in the previous photo. On the side of the block, I drew a dark line indicating where the hole was located. And also drew a line down the side of the seat blocks to show how we needed the hole to go through them. Then we clamped the guide block firmly to a bench.


One at a time, each seat block was lined up and clamped beside the guide block. Note from the photo how the block is clearly a bit off from straight. However, the pencil lines along the top of the two blocks are lined up. (The small hole indicates where the block had been temporarily held in position with wood screws.)


Then I fed the drill through the guide block and and on through the seat block, which gave us a reasonably perfectly drilled hole.


Like this…


One little side note. I discovered that it was good to leave a gap of about 1” (give or take a bit) between the two blocks. This gave room for chips to be expelled each time I pulled back on the drill bit. You could only drill about 1/2” at a time and then needed to pull back to expel chips. Even so there was still a touch of burning going on.

After we had drilled the seat blocks, my son and I took them over to the belt sander and rounded over the edges so they looked more like the rounded boards of the seats.


While all this was going on inside, my buddy was outside with the sander, working on the outside of the canoe. There is still a fair bit of sanding needed to smooth the outside.


And that was enough for one evening.


There are only a few more details still ahead: more sanding, fitting the seats, and spraying varnish.
 
July 12 Canoe Progress

I was away last week, so no photos or updates from then. My buddy worked a bit on fitting the bolts to the seats, and we continued that work today. This is the last update on this project from the church shop. If we’d thought to bring some paddles, we might have taken her down to the Fork of the Thames and dropped her in the water to test out. (well, not that we really had the time, but we were tempted!)

First thing we had to do was replace two of the seat posts that we’d made last time. Unfortunately the drill bit had wandered a bit while drilling through it — I suspect it followed the grain which curved a bit — and it was too close to the side. We were more careful here to pick straight grained pieces and that worked out.



The seat and posts holes still needed a little “wiggling” with the drill bit to give us room to fit the bolts easier.


These are stainless steel bolts of varied lengths.


The yoke is bolted in place (loosely) and the rear seat is nearly there.


Then we picked it up and tried it out. Note how it tips toward the back. This is pretty close to exactly what you want, so that you can more easily see out the front. I tried it out also, and it’s pretty good.

As an aside, I remembered to bring my bathroom scale today, and the canoe is right now roughly 49-50lbs, which is pretty good for a cedar strip. All that remains in terms of additional weight is to spray on a few coats of spar varnish.


We wet down the sides to wash off some dust and eyeball the sides and concluded that the sanding job is pretty good and there is no more need for more. (well, maybe a touch on the gunnels.)


View of the inside. Unfortunately we need to remove the seats once more before spraying finish.


Here is a closeup of the carriage bolts holding the yoke in place. I posted this one to show you the scarf joint closeup. Look right along the inwale and you can see the top side of a scarf joint. This one needed a slight bit of attention with some extra epoxy a while back, and still needs to be sanded smoother. Once it is sanded more you should only see a thin line crossing the piece. We tried to position all the scarf joints like this, so you only see a small line. The long angled seam of the joint is on the sides of the inwale (and outwale) so that they are more hidden.


One shot along the inside, showing how the seat supports hang down from the inwale.


July 12 CONTINUED…
 
July 12 CONTINUED…

And the canoe was then loaded up to be transported out to my buddy’s farm. We’ll get together again in a week or two for some final sanding and spraying on some finish. This concludes the work at the church shop. I will still of course be posting photos of the final product!


And on the lighter side I have four more shots:
I accidentally set my camera down inside the canoe and left it set on “interval” shots. So it kept snapping photos every 60 seconds from down there. I added these here just for a laugh. In particular I like the “giant hand” shot. And also, it has the only photos of myself this time, since I did not have my son along to take pictures.






One more closing thought. Today I was asked about total hours. That is of course impossible to accurately answer. However, thanks in large part to this thread here, I have a pretty accurate record of days. I went back through this thread, and my other notes, and I came up with a figure of 33 days when we met to work on this canoe.

There were almost always two of us there, along with various other folks helping in various capacities. So I am estimating 2hrs per day, times 3 people, to be roughly 6 person hours of work per day, or a total of 198 hrs. So I’ll just call it “almost 200 hrs”.

And a repeat of something you might have missed buried in the photos. Right now the canoe is about 49-50lbs in weight, which is pretty good.
 
One more thing: A few folks have asked about the raffle... Right now our thoughts are that any raffle for this summer is a dead deal, given how many people are away on vacation, and how little summer will be left by the time we get the finish on (ie: maybe August). We're in discussions with some other folks here and right now our thoughts are to hold off on the raffle until the late fall. We host a multi-vendor Christmas sale then and we think that would be a good time to try and raffle this off.
 
That is too cool!! I am quite new to this forum and came across this thread while looking for ideas of wood projects so I have been following the progress religiously. I would love to do something like this at my church as well. Can't wait for the finished project pictures.
 
This has been one of the most fun projects I can recall following here, Art. :clap: My hat is off to you for your efforts to document the process for us.

And since I'm too lazy to go back and find the answer, did you make the yoke or purchase it already made? This is the first I'd really noticed the sweet curves and contours. It looks very comfortable. (Or as comfortable as carrying 50 on your shoulders can be, lol.)
 
And since I'm too lazy to go back and find the answer, did you make the yoke or purchase it already made? This is the first I'd really noticed the sweet curves and contours. It looks very comfortable. (Or as comfortable as carrying 50 on your shoulders can be, lol.)

we purchased the yoke and the seats, Vaughn. The seats were to save time. The yoke was because it is very hard to carve a nice yoke.

And you're right, 50lbs is still a noticeable weight! I've portaged a 50lb canoe previously. I found 2-300 meters was fine. 500-600 was doable, but not fun. I see these people who portage 800-1500 meters and I marvel.
 
50 lbs isn't too bad. Mine weighs in at 75 lbs.

As for the styrofoam, If this photo works, you should be able to see how the ends are blocked off in this photo. There are big chunks stuffed full in each end covered by those panels. Thankfully i have never had to test how well it floats full of water.
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You store it inside!!!!! inside your house!!!! Actually considering it's beauty, that's a good idea...
One of our favorite little restaurants has a couple of canoes hanging up inside. One is full size and one is a little 1/4? size model.

Both are very nice looking works of art, just like that!
 
You store it inside!!!!! inside your house!!!! Actually considering it's beauty, that's a good idea...

My wife actually suggested it. When we moved into our current house, I had no where to store it covered and was thinking about selling it since I had never used it. it's not at all easy to get it through the doorway and hoisted up to the ceiling but since I rarely ever use it, it's more Art than anything.
 
On another forum I was asked about final photos. Here is the response I wrote...

Oh hey, Everyone. I’m sorry, I totally forgot that I had not posted any final images. I think I was maybe planning to wait until after the raffle, but oh well.

We did basically no more work over the balance of the summer after my last post.

In October I got together with my buddy in Aylmer, where the canoe had been stored at his work’s shop. We stripped out the seats and yoke and did some final sanding and tweaking.

(This was located in the former Imperial Tobacco storage barns, which is truly an immense and amazing structure to explore.)






Then in November, we did some spraying of Helmsman spar urethane at my friends home shop. I was only able to make it once, and unfortunately did not get very good photos.




Here it is on display at it’s grand unveiling, the last weekend in November when we hosted a Christmas sale/bazar at our church and started selling raffle tickets for the canoe.

The Raffle draw is actually next week, January 20 or 21 (I forget which)






And here is Albert and Myself, posing with the canoe.



Thanks for coming along on this journey. Dunno if I’ll ever do that again!
 
AWWWWESOME! Art. Thanks for sharing all the process, and now... when will it have the water baptise? Who is going to be the one who breaks the champagne bottle on the hull?

I'd love to see pics of that and you on it navigating.:thumb:
 
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