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!