Ladies and gents, a canoe

Well, it's finally come, the much ballyhooed arrival of a new 17' 9" cedar strip canoe into my world. About 10 weeks of my everyday life consumed with all things wood and canoe, with a more than satisfactory result I'm pleased to say. It has been a personally incredible process to create something from a long-simmered vision into something very tangible. It began from a random thought long ago, grew to faint goal, then I bought a book and started really dreaming. I suppose it was inevitable at that point, but to have finally achieved it all, I can't really describe the feeling I get.

One of the best experiences through this whole process has been sharing work, excitement, and evolution with a great community here in the Similkameen, as well as all of you who have followed along with this blog. To all of you, my utmost thanks for your encouragement, humor, questions, and for continually reminding me how fortunate and blessed I am to have the people in my life that I do.

Now, once the water starts thawing, it's a pretty easy assumption as to where I'll be found and what I'll be doing this summer. Paddling partners are always welcome and wanted, so if you track me down for a ride, I'll surely oblige. And if you start thinking "gosh, I sure would like something like that," I know a guy who might be able fix you up proper!

This whole blogging thing has been pretty fun too, so I don't really intend to discontinue this one. Instead, I see an evolution towards a chronicle of the impending life together of this canoe and its captain. I guarantee there will be a story or two worth reading about! At the very least, stay tuned for various christening events and first paddles coming up.

And with that, I leave you with some words to live by from my old friend Dave Thoreau:
"Everyone must believe in something. I believe I'll go canoeing." 

Born of the orchards, now bound for open waters.

I carved these paddles a couple years ago to start greasing the skids towards building the whole canoe. Bow seat will eventually be lowered a couple inches, hence the wonky bolts sticking out underneath. 

Finishing touches

Words are elusive for this weary mind tonight, so I'll let the pictures do much of the talking.

First trip out of doors! Yes, that is a celebratory brewskie in attendance.  

Hand carved portage yoke from cherry. 

View from the driver's seat. And visions of spring thaw dance in my head.

Decks finally in all their glory. Really pleased with how these turned out.

Brass stem band and painter's ring attached afters hours of cutting, drilling, torching, bending, breaking, cursing, kicking, rinse and repeat. But they're on now, hopefully never to come off. 

Perd'near there

Seems much too long since my last update, enough that I don't recall where I last left. Most of the work of late has been focused on getting the little bits up to snuff, and then moving the whole operation back over to the garage at my place. The borrowed space was a gift and an almost necessary one at that, though it always came with an expiration date. So, after cleaning the new garage in preparation of its new habitant and building some fancy canoe cradles to hold the thing, I finagled another gullible friend into helping me move the craft up and off of it's form and onto the top of the truck, gingerly mind you, for the very first time. A simple process, but a monumental one to be sure. Following that, another garage clean up, this time involving vacuuming ceilings, copious floor sweeping/vacuuming/sweeping, and the like. Didn't figure on creating such a mess, but then again it's not unusual for such things to happen to me.

Resting now in it's new home for the short time, I finally set into varnishing the interior and all the trim. I celebrated by buying my first real-deal, expensive bristle brush, and set to task! But wait...more sanding first. Ugh. Remember all that shiny fresh epoxy? Now it was to be sanded into a dull opaque hue, hopefully getting a sexy smooth surface free of runs, bubbles, and other oddities in the epoxy. Once coated in spar varnish, the gleam comes right back, so the buff effect is short-lived.

Unfortunately this new garage is uninsulated, and so I've been applying the varnish pretty much right at its minimum temperature threshold, which is actually set at a surprisingly low 40F/4C. Even still, funny results ensued on the finish, enough to bug me but not bad enough to make me throw in towel. The trim (i.e. bare wood surfaces), however, really took a shine and have turned out very well. The colour contrast between wood species, not to mention the crazy grain patterns on the decks, is really apparent at this point, and has really brought the boat to life.

In between waiting for coats to dry, I finished up carving the carrying yoke with a wood gouge, thus giving rise to my first successful foray into wood carving. Granted a shallow dish isn't all that remarkable compared to, say, a Bill Reid carving, but still. Mis-drilled seat holes were refilled with epoxy (once again saving the day), and various other little bits finished and varnished up.

Remaining? Exterior hull varnish, which will get about 6 layers for a robust finish worthy of some serious use, finally installing the thwarts and seats (now that I have the correctly sized bolts), and a final touch of adding the stem bands. Not much really, hopefully all done within the week.

Stay tuned for the final product!

Shiny finish, gone gone gone. But ooh yeah, it's silky smooth.

Coaming added to the bow deck to keep those pesky waves out of the canoe.

It's small, but hopefully will keep things a little drier while at sea.

Steam gained

Now that the hull has been completed, this busy beaver of sorts has been toiling away at creating all the flair that will tie the canoe together, literally and figuratively. Seats have been fitted, bulkheads and decks installed, thwart and yoke partially carved. Doesn't sound like much, but I assure you these seemingly benign tasks have filled my days of the last week with much sweat and curses, sharp results and small moments of immense satisfaction. Though it has been an exhilarating process getting to this point, it also presents a very distinct light at the end of the tunnel. I've planned since the get go to be finished by the end of February, and by all appearances I may actually be ahead of schedule. Certainly hate to see this project end, but there will indubitably be a continuous stream of joy to come from this. Can't wait to get paddling!

Since many small but fairly significant processes have been accomplished since the last post, I'm going to go light on the verbiage (hooray?) and heavy on the picturage for this post. After all, admit it, we all read the pictures first, whether it be some unassuming blog, your favourite kid's book (Good Night Moon!), or the latest issue of the New Yorker.

I do, however, wish to mention one thing about the decks. Eschewing the walnut I had originally planned on using, I built these with some cherry wood that had been milled from some old orchard cherry trees belonging to Brian, to whom I am already indebted for the use of his garage for this project. Being old and gnarled wood, the grain pattern is really variable and beautiful. I managed to book match pieces for both decks, to that the wood figure is essentially mirrored with symmetry, which frankly just looks pretty damn cool. Not to mention the boat now contains a very unique part of this valley and community in which it is being built, something I will treasure for time.

In honour of the Hallmark holiday of the month tomorrow, I leave you with this old proverb:

"Love many, trust few, and always paddle your own canoe."

Scupper blocks glued and sealed, ready for install.

More clamping fun! Inwales get epoxied on.

Stern bulkhead installed. Though the main purpose of bulkheads in a canoe are to create airtight chambers for increasing the buoyancy of the craft, as well as adding a little extra strength to the long hull, I also added a deck plate in the stern for accessing a little extra storage space when need be. Nevermind the tape and clamps at top, though they certainly wouldn't be rectifying an error or anything like that...

Seats all finished up and ready to go. I used your standard military issue nylon parachute cord  and wove it with  the a traditional snowshoe pattern. The process of tying these up was a fun diversion for a few nights, even granting me admission to a true-to-form stitch 'n bitch session. Why do these up this way you ask? Aside from lending  a deeper hue to the old-fashioned whimsy of a wooden boat, I figured the less holes or slots drilled into them (which seemingly would create myriad opportunities for water to waltz in and set decay) the better, and so settled on the knotted approach. Time will tell if they actually are comfortable. For now and until it's on the water, it's all about good looks, baby.

Bow seat getting fitted at the right height and angle.

Carved thwart of cherry (isn't that a Maldovian dish?) . It is a pure pleasure to the work fine, graceful lines with a spokeshave, I must say. 

Rear deck fitted and installed. The cool curly grain of the orchard cherry will really become apparent once it's varnished. But you get a sense of it's potential at this point.

And finally, the outwales are screwed into place and rounded off at the ends. I elected to forgo the epoxy on these, to make future repairs and replacements easier. A lot of people have asked me if I was going to cap over the cedar hull, a well-accepted good idea by all accounts. I however, really like the aesthetic of contrasting colored lines, and feel it gives the boat a flowing and lithe character.

Hup hup, a hull is whole!

After a brief journey of respite to the fresh rains and faces of Vancouver, I've returned to my quaint life in the Similkameen recharged and ready for the second push. Before I left, and since I last left you all with the last entry, I managed to round up another sucker, er, willing helping hand for the fiberglass job in the inner hull. No matter how you cut it, this process is eased immensely with some help, and I've been extremely grateful to have it. So far, the only remittance required for such help has been a pledge for some paddle time once we're water-borne. Fair deal say I!

It's almost a bittersweet deal to be finished with the fiberglass stage now - such a monumental learning event, not to mention being critical to the whole structure. The more I worked with it, the more I grew to appreciate and relish the amazingness that is epoxy. Civilizations could be built with the stuff, it's that good. Not the most straight forward or dummy proof material, as I certainly left a barely tolerable amount of oopsies and goofs thanks to my amateur status as epoxy artisan, but with some practice you can do some pretty neato stuff with it, with good looking results. If (when) I build the next small craft (any takers?), I know now what works and what just makes a royal mess. Hopefully. 

Finding the ash wood for the gunwales proved to be most difficult, but eventually I was able to source something. (Mental exercise: Say gunnel, but envision large marine mammals toting assorted firearms in some underwater gangster scene. Now laugh at that sheer absurdity!). I suppose the lesson here is: don't build boats in the desert. Seems straight forward enough, yet here I am... The 10 foot long board was ripped into gunnel width strips, and then scarfed together to create 20 foot or so heavy wooden noodles. Ideally full length pieces would be used here, but again, I refer you to the beginning of this paragraph. Making due with whatever options exist. One way or another, this thing will float and look pretty good doing it, and only I will know each fault and funky trait built into her. We're just tight like that.

Once ripped and scarfed (sounds like an assault from knitting needle-wielding betties), the scuppers were located and, yes, epoxied on. As mentioned in a previous post, scrap pieces of cedar planking were used, except where the seats and thwarts are to be fashioned, in which case I used bigger scuppers of stronger walnut. This is a slow going process, as each of the 25 scuppers on each gunnel requires it's own clamp. Thanks to the abundance of cheap plastic one-off tools available at your local Cambodian Tire, I now own just enough clamps to glue up one gunnel/scupper assembly at a time (and subsequently one assembly to the hull at a time).

Which brings us all to the here and now. Work continues on the seats in the downtime, where after much sanding, routering, and varnishing, I'm now learning the very cool and traditional looking snowshoe weave for the seat innards. It's also an infuriating and curse-inducing lesson in knot management that requires constant detanglement, untwisting, recoiling, rethinking, reconnoitering, so don't be fooled into imagining little old Sean in his chair, craftily tying knots with pleasure and whimsy. Regardless, I did manage to get myself invited to the next stitch'n'bitch session, so perhaps the knotting process in not all for naught.

Inner hull glassed, gunnels scarfed together. 

Holy crap, THAT'S A LOT OF CLAMPS!! Scuppers on!

Keepin' on

Perhaps some of you may be wondering by now if I quit or left the game, having not posted anything in a while. I am here to reassure you, however, that work has continued, albeit at a slightly more lackadaisical pace. Fairing of the interior of the hull has blessedly been finished, after many hours of shoulder-burning, patience-testing scraping, sanding, sanding and scraping at all manners of awkward angles. The task of finding a willing second set of hands for the impending fiberglassing has proven a bit more tedious than the prior session, being that most of the prior help is now out of town.

So in the meantime, I've managed to make a whole mess of scuppers and two bulkhead panels from the leftover cedar planking. I cut the scuppers using the drill press, in order to get a nice curved end profile on each piece, with the intention of creating nice symmetrical ovals along the length of the inwales. Scuppers are a natural result of building traditional wood canvas canoes, the construction of which requires the hull be built upon a skeleton of horizontal ribs. The inwales are then secured to the inner face of the ribs, with the spaces between the ribs thus creating the scuppered effect. On a cedar strip canoe, they aren't necessary for constructive purposes, but rather lend a "traditional" look which I still prefer to a solid inwale. More importantly, though, is their useful functions of saving a bit of weight, providing lash down points, and allowing water to drain out when the canoe is dry docked upside down. Standing water on wood is bad juju, and scuppers are the golden antidote.

I've debated some about whether to add bulkheads (sealed compartments) at either end of the canoe, but for now they win out. Adding a little extra buoyancy and strength to a canoe of this length really is a no-brainer now that I really think about it; in the event of a capsize, it'll make it that much easier to recover and not be totally swamped. Also, the bow and stern of this design are a little on the short side (think in contrast to a canoe with the big, curved ends), and so to me seem they would be prone to taking on more water when traversing big waves. Having a little more lift at the ends would, in my theory, help keep the nose up and out of the water as the canoe descends one wave and into the next. Makes sense to me enough to do it! I'm considering adding some kind of watertight hatch, so the space inside can still be utilized for stowing a few essential items in times of lesser duress.

I've also taken the first step into the trim work, cutting and assembling the seat frames. I've been eagerly anticipating this moment, but have put it on hold until now for fear of getting ahead of myself and working myself out of a job, so to speak. I decided to make the seats from cherry, merely for the fact I love its appearance and workability, and also that it was on sale. I used good ol' fashioned mortise and tenon joints to join the seats together, the strongest and cleanest joint for this application. For being my first real stab at creating this type of joint, I was rather pleased to find they came out straight and tight fitting.

The fiberglass on the inner hull is going on tomorrow hopefully, and after a couple days for that to set up, it'll finally be time to go full bore into turning a floppy hull into a tailored, lean and mean lake-cruising machine. Actually, it's not a machine at all, nor is it likely to be lean (this won't be any passe, no-frills vessel), but you get my point of enthusiasm.

Finally on the right side of up! 

Bulkhead panels, a heap o' scuppers, and plans to boot.

Mortise and tenons, hopefully with the wherewithal to withstand a bum or two.

Glassed!

After many hours of nervous hand-wringing and countless hypothetical what-ifs passing through my mind, the fiberglass layup for the outer hull has been a success. Huzzah for that. Turns out it wasn't such a hard thing to do, but being a noob at the whole process, it turned out far from perfect, but nothing I can't absolutely live with. Watching the many hues and gradations of texture and color come to life under the shiny epoxy was exhilarating - finally a true sense of what the craft will look like in real life! 

I was extremely fortunate and grateful to have the assistance of  a couple friends, who willingly placed themselves in a potentially ooey gluey situation. By our powers combined, stress was diminished and the job went quickly and smoothly. 

Three coats of epoxy covered the 6oz. weight fiberglass cloth, which turns translucent once wetted out. Should be enough to keep everything together and me from sinking once water-borne. I'll let it set up and cure for a couple days, then it'll be time to lift it off the forms and set it right side up for the first time. Who knows what lurks underneath? I'm a little afraid to find out, but again, nothing a little epoxy gooyiness can't help.

Colors are really popping now. 

She shines!

Hull glassed, lungs and eyes safe, and at least one thumb accounted for. All makes for a good day.