Finishing the canoe hull

I strongly recommend applying at least one coat of un-thinned epoxy to all of the plywood surfaces inside and outside the canoe. The official advice is that you should pick your time of day carefully as you do not want rising temperatures to cause expanding air to bubble from the wood after you have applied the epoxy. I was very careful about this and ended up with a forest of bubbles despite a careful application and “tipping” out – so there may be more at play here than meets the eye. Not to worry, sanding is good exercise and the epoxy needed some sanding in any case to prepare the surface for the final finish.
When applying the epoxy coat I did take the time to ensure that all of the plank joints were completely filled with epoxy leaving no tiny gaps for dirt or anything else to lodge.
The plan for the interior, decks, inwales and outwales was simple – four coats of yacht varnish. A little care needed to avoid runs but nothing to learn. All anyone needs is a dust free environment, no wind and a dry atmosphere. OK – so lots of potential trauma there but hey nothing new.
The idea for the exterior was to apply a coloured catalytic polyester resin. This would provide a scratch resistant coloured finish – ideal for resisting launch and recovery damage as well as those small collisions that even the most expert paddler comes to expect from time to time – and happen to me all of the time. I am pretty sure that this material will become the finish of choice for canoe builders – if they can figure out how to apply it. Does that sound like I had problems? Well I did. Where it applied properly, the finish is smooth, glossy and looks great. Getting that smooth glossy finish involves getting a thickish layer smoothed out well before the hardener kicks in. “The tin” promised 20 minutes of “pot life” – my first attempt got less than 5 with everything turning to jelly at around the same time.
Experiment and bitter experience has shown the following. The resin will not adhere successfully to plywood that has not previously been treated with a coat of epoxy. If you rub down one layer of the material you can successfully bond a second layer to the first.  Applying too thin a layer may mean that the material will not harden successfully.  While it takes some rubbing down, a smooth final finish can be produced from even the most inauspicious start.
So that is why my final exterior finish is “Topcoat” applied to the number one plank and polyurethane paint in a matching colour applied to the rest.
Quick final round-up:
Sorry for the lack of pictures from the final stages. Things were done in fairly short order on flying visits home to France. Also this year saw the worst drought in SW France that anyone can remember and most river craft have had to be fitted with wheels. As you will not want to see my pride and joy floating on my neighbours very small swimming pool,  I will post some pics of my canoe being paddled after I next get afloat on one of the great French rivers.
You can buy great seat fitting kits that come with wooden dowels that can be cut to length  to cover the bolts once you have run a couple of trials to get the seat height right for you and your canoe. Using one of these kits will save a lot of time and trouble.
I did start reading a text on paddle making but when I realised it started with selecting a suitable tree, felling it, ripping out some planks and leaving them to mature for several years I reached for a canoe suppliers catalogue and found a good range of attractive wooden paddles at remarkably low prices.
As I am now living back in the UK and I have a large garage space (well more a potential space than an actual space you will understand – subject to family negotiation and prioritisation) then new projects beckon. Building paddled water craft may well be addictive as well as contagious, just as Paul said when I started this venture.

Glassing the interior

The day following the glassing of the bottom exterior of the hull I turned the canoe over and prepared to glass the inside. First, I gave the inside a good vacuum cleaning to remove any wood dust or other detritus. Then I used the same plastic based masking tape as before to mask the edges of the number three planks. However we also need to create a fillet between the one and two planks and along the centre line of the keel to provide a smooth line for the cloth to follow. Glass cloth does not do sharp transitions. I used paper masking tape to mark the outside limits of the centre line fillet and to mark the limits of the fillets between the one and two planks. I aimed for quite narrow fillets in each case.
Next I laid the remaining roll of glass cloth in the bottom of the boat and trimmed it to the outer limits of the masking tape running along the number three planks. I then carefully removed the cloth and set it to one side.
I then mixed a batch of epoxy and added plenty of wood flour to get a nice, thick filler. I applied the filler to the prepared and masked joints using a soft plastic pallet knife purloined from the kitchen. Around the middle of the centre line of the keel the angle where the planks meet is pretty shallow but it is worth ensuring that sufficient filler is applied even here to get a contiguous fillet from end to end.  This job is best done with a sequence of small batches of thickened mix as the required quantity is a little difficult to decide in advance.
Once the fillets had been created I removed the masking tape strips – with the exception of those strips protecting the number three planks. I then carefully replaced the glass cloth back in the bottom of the boat – stretching it out but being careful to not disturb the still soft  fillets in the plank joints. Then it was back to the formula of mixing small batches of un-thickened epoxy and using these to wet out the cloth over the two sets of planks and the fillets. This is slightly more of a fiddle that when working the outside of the hull but the practice of the previous day keeps the process flowing. If all goes well, you will end up with a neatly glassed bottom with three attractive dark lines running fore and aft marking the joints between the planks. The glass cloth and the wetting out process nicely finishes the fillets although you should probably take care not to apply too much pressure as that might distort the lines.
In spare moments while waiting for the resin and glass cloth to cure sufficiently to allow the trimming and removal of the excess along with the masking tape I took the time to shape the back face of the seat doublers and to glue then into their intended locations on the inwales.
The decks:
A piece of advice for those who have followed this process from the beginning. Go back and do not cut out the decks from the ply sheets. Instead cut out two rectangles of plywood wider and longer than the provided deck lines. Why? Well the bulkhead fitting is a bit of a trial and error process where you strive to get them in place and to fair the lines of the unglued hull. This combined with a number of other factors means that while your canoe will hopefully have a pleasing sweep of lines they will probably vary a tad from the designer’s original drawing – and probably from his or her first build. If you take this advice then you can offer up your deck ‘blanks’ and draw around the lines of the outwale to get the exact shape and length for each deck. Cut the outer line of the deck the thickness of the outwales in from the marked line and then find a nice curve to act as a guide for the final curve above the bulkheads.
If you did cut out the decks to the designer’s lines (like I did) then you will find that you have to adjust the line  – and this will a bit more difficult if you can’t use the outwale curves to assist.
I cut my splashguards from some oak stock and glued them onto the decks  - once again demonstrating that I am much better at cutting convex than concave curves – but they do not look too bad and the colour contrast is nice.
Now the next piece of advice – something I wish I had thought of when gluing my decks in place, instead of a couple of days later. Shape and glue a strip of plywood to sit behind the bulkheads and to accurately meet the line of the deck when fitted. It might even make sense to shave a little off the bulkhead tops to give a clear gap between these edges and the deck line. If you are as ham fisted as me then this will save a rather bodged joint between the bulkhead and the deck after gluing. With the plywood piece in place, filling the joint would be simple and clean
I also took some time to make two simple seats from oak strips I ripped from some lengths left over from cutting the inwales and outwales. I also cut a section of mahogany to form a thwart – cutting a rough hourglass shape and then sitting in the sunshine to sand the curves until I was happy with the look and it felt good in my hands.
I varnished the seats and thwart using the “duffers” method. This differs from the manufacturer’s recommendation printed on the tin. I suspect that varnish manufacturers deliberately list a complex sequence of steps (including some specialised thinners) so they can be pretty sure that no-one ever follows them exactly – giving them an “out” when anything goes wrong.  My method involves applying three coats of un-thinned varnish; allowing the minimum recommended elapsed time between coats. I then rub down any roughness caused by raised wood fibres still pushing through the varnish surface with very fine wet and dry paper and then apply a fourth coat. Job done,  with a nice deep glossy finish every time.

That canoe project (Mike Griffiths)

After fitting the inwales and outwales I took the time to give the canoe hull an initial rub down. I concentrated on where I had filled the wire holes and on any marks left by the wires on the corners of the planks – being careful to preserve the lines of the “step”.  One exception was that I knocked down the sharp corner between planks numbered one and two on the inside of the hull as this joint was going to be bridged by the fibreglass cloth re-enforcing for the bottom of the hull.

Reading my building bible had made me apprehensive about the process of glassing the bottom of the hull. The suggested technique was to pour on a quantity of epoxy resin and then to brush that out – adding resin where the cloth was not properly wetted but removing resin where the cloth was floating. It all sounded rather hectic and off-putting with inevitable variations in “pot life” making things just that bit more exciting. By ignoring the book and following some good alternate advice the reality was very different. Unhurried and straightforward, with the inside of the hull only slightly more awkward than the exterior.

Glassing the hull:

Let me describe the process, starting with the exterior where only the number one planks need the application of glass cloth. First, I applied masking tape to the edge of the number two planks. I found the best tape for this purpose was a plastic based one intended (I think) for use when painting windows) although a paper based tape would be fine and was what I used elsewhere.
 I had taken my roll of glass cloth into the house and taken advantage of a wooden floored corridor to cut the roll into two strips - one a little wider than the width of the two number one planks at their widest. The other strip I was confident would be wide enough to bridge the bottom on the inside. I laid the narrower strip along the hull and trimmed it so that the edges protruded a little beyond the masking tape protecting the edges of the number two planks. Material from the ends of the strip was going to be used later to cover the plank ends where they meet at the bow and stern.
My only other preparation was to trim a cheapish paintbrush so that the hairs were only 15mm or so long – giving me a mildly stiff brush which would not pick up too much resin. If you follow on and do things as I did them, then it is worth preparing three such brushes – sizes are not important but I found those with a 5cm width to work very well. If you clean the brushes after use then they can be used again later in the build process.

I mixed a small batch of epoxy resin (four pumps) in a pot and then, starting in the middle of the canoe at the centre line, I began to wet out the glass cloth using my modified paintbrush. Work enough resin into the cloth to make it transparent but not enough for the resin to build up on top of the cloth. The idea is to wet the cloth thoroughly but to leave a slightly matt finish – certainly not glossy. Continue working towards the outside edge of the planks and towards both the bow and stern. When you run out of epoxy – just mix another batch in the same pot and keep working. You can adjust the mix quantity towards the end. By mixing small batches you can take your time, working steadily towards the finish.

All you have to do now is clean your brush (if you have the relevant solvent) and wait for the epoxy to start to go off.  This is also a good moment to cut two strips of glass cloth from the spare ends “on the bias” to cover the stem and stern. The strips should be cut at 45 degrees to the weave of the cloth as this will maximise the number of threads crossing the plank joints while also being easy to stretch around the curves. 

Depending upon the ambient temperature your wait might be just a few minutes or even a couple of hours. When things feel right, load a Stanley Knife with a fresh blade and use this to cut through the resin and glass at the edge of the number one plank – peeling the excess glass cloth away with the masking tape. The way the planks are set makes this particularly easy on the outside of the hull.

Mix another small batch of un-thickened epoxy and paint a thin layer onto the planks at the stem and stern where your bias cut strips of cloth will be located. (This was why you needed the second prepared brush.) This will help hold the cloth into place while you wet it out and stretch it to shape. Lay the cloth pieces over the epoxy and then wet them out. Then I found it simplest to manage the final shaping and smoothing using my gloved hands.
I also decided to double up the glass on the keel by adding a length of woven glass tape down the centre line of the hull. I cut the tape to length and then stuck it in place – taking advantage of the fact that the epoxy from the initial layer of glass cloth was still just tacky. I then took up my third prepared brush and wetted out the glass tape, working from the middle of the boat and using small batches of epoxy just as before.

Thus I was able to re-enforce the bottom of the canoe in a single, rather pleasant working session – although I did manage to get through five pairs of protective gloves.

The prototype single

Just a couple of pics to prove that the prototype floats.

Over Engineered

I have been working on a kayak loader as we are trying to manage with only one vehicle. I like the general idea of the Kari-Tek Easy Load but wanted to be able to adapt the loader to different car and kayak combinations. Prototypes came and went until I got to this:

Prototype kayak loader

Most of the aluminium and the sliding mechanism is from a cheap step-ladder (much cheaper than buying stock), with a few bits and pieces of scrap. On the plus side, it is relatively easy to load one fully laden plastic kayak - but when you add the second kayak, it is hard to lift and slide. On the subject of sliding, the mechanism attracts sand (of course) which you can safely say, does not help.

There are various solutions to the problem on the web - mostly ways of protecting your car as you slide the kayak onto the roofrack - with one bright idea - that of loading from the side - where the rack is much closer to the perimeter of the car. This plus an observation from Catherine along the lines of 'can't you just have supports that slide out from the roof bars?' prompted the following design:

Simple Kayak Loader

The roof bar extensions are just a push fit, and the cross bar stops the kayak rubbing against the car - simples. If you have central supports on the bars (I normally do, but not shown in this picture), you just load the second kayak from the other side. So, no moving parts, light and easy to pack away - cheap.

Time to turn the old prototype into a loft ladder.

Harpoon

Boat building and paddle making carry on in the background, but last week we were contacted by Nigel Dennis to see if we could make some harpoons for the Anglesey Symposium. Now, I am always up for making something new, but have never seen a Greenland harpoon, so a quick search for some pics on Google, and out for some testing with Phil Kinvig who has just built a strip cedar boat.

Harpoons by the Anglesey Stick Double

Harpoon and throwing stick on the foredeck

Rich attacking some seaweed

Newest drill/driver does a desmond

My newest cordless drill/driver has got to the point where you have to put the battery on charge whenever you put it down - which means you have to have the charger with you at all times - rather spoils the idea really.

This is with the 'good' battery - the less good one was pretty near useless from new (I suppose the manufacturers found a good way to get rid of the batteries that failed QA), and of course a replacement battery costs more than a completely new unit.

Which is why I have a couple of past casualties lying around. What to do with them?

Ok, my solution is not cordless, and not as portable - but boy, feel the torque from those DC motors feeding off a real battery.

Anglesey Stick Double Sea Kayak

The Anglesey Stick Double is relatively compact at 18 foot six (5.6 metres), with a beam of 2 foot one (64 cms) The steep bow and near vertical stern result in a good waterline length with no need for a skeg or rudder There is a surprising amount of rocker, and the boat is far from sluggish, and will surf well (even for a double) The hull is epoxy stiffened with marine ply, sheathed in glass and finished in polyester The deck is finished in strip cedar coated in epoxy and varnish (and varnish, and varnish ...) Hatches are standard 'Kajak Sport' - round front and oval rear, seats and backrests are built bespoke, and there is an option of adjustable footrests or full bulkheads (recommended).

The prototype was displayed at the Anglesey Symposium, and we are now pleased to be able to offer a bespoke build service.

Anglesey Stick Doubles are built bespoke to order, and cost £3500 + VAT

More information and images

 

Mike Griffiths (guest blogger) has a whale of a time with his canoe project

I left my account of building a stitch and glue lapstrake canoe with the inwales and outwales cut to length and ready for gluing in place. One of the challenges of this operation was clearly going to be getting a snug fit between the ends of the outwales and the pointy bit at the stem or stern. I realised that when I measured the angle for the inwale mitre I had effectively also measured the angle required for a couple of wedges that would allow me to clamp the outwale ends tightly against the hull extremities. Cutting some short wedges and trying them out showed that they would do the job so I was raring to go. All I needed was an assistant to help hold things in place while I did all the technical stuff with clamps and a mallet. Assistants proved few and far between - and then some paid project work demanded my weekends and the cold dark evenings did nothing to encourage a lot of progress.


The spring change to the clocks, the arrival of the house martins and a sudden surge in temperatures all combined to re-invigorate the project. I moved the canoe back out to one of the barns and set up to make some progress.


I marked the location of the two decks and the planned location of the "doublers" for the two seats on the inwales and then removed them and routed a curved edge onto the inside face of them both between those points. This gave a pleasing shape while retaining a square section where required for gluing the decks and fitting the seats. I also cut the doublers for the seat supports ready to be shaped to the curve of the inwale. You cant just glue them into the gunwale "sandwich" as this would result in a flat spot in the rather nice curve created by the bent oak lengths - they need to be shaped to fit.

 Routing the ends of the seat support doublers

As I mentioned, the canoe construction book suggests that an assistant would be required to glue the inwales and outwales in place. In fact, with a little care and planning you can do it yourself. I mixed some epoxy and thickened it with lots of colloidal silica to stop it running. Once it had been applied to the inwales it was pretty easy to snap these in place. A fresh batch of thick epoxy mix was then applied to an outwale and this was then offered up to the outer edge of the canoe and clamped in place. Getting the first clamp in position was the tricky part. I started from the middle of the canoe and worked outwards towards the stem and stern with a clamp placed about every 15 centimetres.


Once the clamps are in place you can spend some time making adjustments to the line and wiping away any drips or smears resulting from juggling a slippery glued outwale, a clamp and a couple of protecting plywood pads in just two hands. A sense of humour helps as you pick up one or other of these from the floor for the fifth time. I only had enough clamps to glue one side at a time but this gave me the time in between to mix up a small batch of epoxy thickened with wood dust to start filling all of those holes in the hull left by the copper wire ties. It felt re-assuring to fill in all those spots that showed daylight through the plywood - perhaps this thing will float upon the water some day.

The first side glued and clamped and the wire holes filled

Construction - part ten

Mike Griffiths (guest blogger) is he shaping up?


My posts telling the story of my stitch and glue lapstrake canoe construction are likely to slow as the main stages in the construction come to and end and I start in on the sanding and finishing. Before we get to that stage though there is still quite a lot of work to do preparing for (just about) the final addition to the structure - the gunwales. I still had to add some epoxy to the joints that had not been completely filled but first I deviated from the instructions. I knew that the European oak inwales and outwales were probably going to be a little bit difficult to bend and that this would stress the top plank in particular as they were bent to the boat's final curves. I decided to add a small fillet to both the top two plank joints behind the bulkheads - I also added a narrow glass cloth reinforcing strip. Why the addition? Well, as a first time builder, I could not be sure that those rather tight joints had been completely filled with glue and the last thing I wanted to happen was a joint failure.




With these additions in place, I then topped up the plank joints that were not completely filled the first time. The construction book suggests that you should use a slightly thicker mix than the glue used for the first shot but to apply it in the same way - using a syringe. I decided on a different tack and thickened my epoxy with lots of colloidal silica. I then used a pallet knife to push the thickened mix into the joints - using the knife to level off to what I hoped should be the correct hull lines.




Perhaps foolishly,I did all of this epoxy work in the lowest ambient temperature so far - which had an interesting effect. The epoxy cured nicely in the usual 24 hours or so but a few days later I noticed that there was an 'amine blush' on the surface. This waxy layer needs to be cleaned off with detergent and water. It is strange stuff though and I will try and avoid a re-occurrence by working at higher temperatures in future.




I took advantage of generally higher outdoor temperatures of the next couple of days to move the canoe hull back to the barn while I first of all cleaned my office and then started work on the inwales and outwales. First off, I sanded off any epoxy that had extruded from the scarfed joints and then I inspected each length of oak to decide which piece was going to do which duty. I then used the router to round over the top and bottom edges of the outwales. I found it was best to clamp two lengths side by side to give me a good platform to rest the router base on. After routing, I sanded the top and bottom edge to remove any saw marks left over from ripping the lengths from the original plank.

While I want to finish the corners of the inwales, I could not round them at this stage as the pieces needed to be fitted to the boat before I could determine the locations of the decks and the seats. I want to leave the inwales square under the decks for maximum adhesion and I will also need to fit "doublers" to increase the width of the inwales where the seats will be fitted. It is not clear yet if I will leave this finishing until after the inwales are glued in place or if I will try and sort them out before that.




I then set about clamping one of the outwales to the outer edge of the canoe hull so that I could cut it to length. First off, this looked somewhat tricky as the oak lath had to bend in three dimensions to follow the curve of the top plank as well as the twist of the hull. In practice it turned out to be fairly steady although a couple of extra arms would have been helpful from time to time. When the outwale was clamped and cut to length I could admire the improved curve of the hull - not quite perfect yet but definitely smoother.

Offering up the first outwale

I then clamped the second outwale in position and cut that to length. The next task was to stretch a string along the length of the hull to measure the mitre angle that would need to be cut between the inwales where they met at the stem and stern. With this measure I could cut the first mitre on the first inwale and then start working it into the boat. The involved removing each clamp holding the outwale in turn and the adjusting it to hold the inwale in place as well. One I neared the other end of the canoe I could mark and make the cut to complete the inwale and to set it snugly in place.

With the inwale in place, the top edge of the hull on that beam took on a very pleasing curve from end to end. Then it was just a case of following the same routine with the other inwale. Wow do you need a lot of clamps to build a canoe. It is very clear that I will need all that I have just to glue one gunwale into position if I want a good fit.

After that I was out of time and could not start in on gluing the gunwales into place. In any case, it was clear from my efforts so far that I was going to need an assistant for this particular process. Next weekend I am visiting the UK which means no work on the canoe but it will allow me the opportunity to pick up some materials difficult to obtain locally - some good yacht varnish and some coloured epoxy top coat for the outside of the hull. In the mean time the gunwales can stay clamped in place which might reduce some of the tension in the wood and make the gluing less of a fight - well maybe.

Construction - part nine

Mike Griffiths (guest blogger) sticks to his canoe building project

I forgot to post my tips on bulkhead fitting. The first is that you could consider using plastic ties for this part of the construction as it may be hard to remove the bulkhead ties after the epoxy fillets fixing them in place have cured. However my key piece of advice is – go up a drill size or two. The holes will be covered by the epoxy fillets on the inside and can be filled and sanded on the outside of the hull. This means that a larger size should not detract from the final finish but those bigger holes make threading the bulkhead ties simple rather than a nightmare struggle (you can tell I got to this solution after a bit of a fight). Otherwise – just concentrate on getting the bulkheads square to the line of the keel and nice and central.

Now to the sticky part. The first step in gluing the hull is to create epoxy and glass cloth fillets joining the planks at the bow and stern. My canoe construction bible specifies the use of wood flour as a filler for the epoxy – trust me on this – go with colloidal silica. This mix is simpler to manage and control – you will get better results. Having said that you will want to use wood flour on the fillets on the front (visible) side of the bulkheads to get a good colour match. Perhaps there is something to be said for getting in some practice before creating your first visible joint. I used masking tape to limit the width of the visible fillets although I think they will benefit from some additional sanding and shaping when I get a few minutes.

I made a few filleting tools from some scrap pieces of plywood picking my shapes and sizes at random so I was gratified to find that my hit and miss approach provided me with some pretty useful aids for spreading and shaping the epoxy mix.

I strayed from the instructions a little and used glass tape over the hidden bulkhead fillets as well as on the stem/stern fillets. The additional weight is trivial and I liked the idea of the extra adhesion following the fight to adjust the twist in a couple of the planks to get the bulkheads properly fitted. I also brushed some un-filled epoxy mix onto the plywood surfaces that were going to be joined by all of the fillets to soak into the top ply and so to ensure that the bond to the wood was optimal.

Once the fillets were cured I could turn the canoe upside down and set the trestles square and aligned – it was now time to glue the joints between the planks. Some of these joints are quite “open” on the underside while the last few inches at each end of the planks are pretty tightly closed with no visible gap to insert the epoxy mix. The tools of choice here are a syringe minus the sharp needle point and a pallet knife to slightly open the tighter joints for the epoxy glue to be pumped in. The glue is well mixed epoxy with a little filler. The specified consistency was “thin gravy”. Like the previous “jam” specification I was facing a potential transatlantic cultural gap here. I went with just a very small portion of filler in the mix and that seemed to work well. You need to work down the seams reasonably quickly and I found that mixing frequent lots of small batches of epoxy was best after my second batch went off at such speed that I lost the use of my first syringe. It would probably be a great idea to have an assistant available to mop up small runs but reality probably means that you are (like me) going to have to sand some of them out later.

Once the epoxy in the seams had cured I could assess the results. There were a good number of places where some additional epoxy would be required to completely fill the seams but I decided that this would be an easier task with the wire ties removed. So now was the time to pull out the 350 odd ties I had so laboriously threaded into the boat just a few days before. Like all the other tasks a few trials soon got me into a routine that sped up the work. You need three tools for this job – the needle nosed pliers used to put the ties in, a small pair of side cut wire cutters and (the surprise ingredient) an electrical soldering iron.

If you untwist a tie and then bend the two ends so they are once again vertical to the plank surface at the location of the hole they are easy to clip off on the outside of the hull more or less flush with the surface. Certainly without any “hooks” in their ends. Then it is a simple task to give the tie a yank with the pliers on the inside of the hull – and most will come straight out. One or two (more at the ends of the hull behind the bulkheads) will be held in place by epoxy – perhaps where they were inserted very close to a seam or there has been an unnoticed “dribble”. Here you use the soldering iron to warm up the wire to the point where the epoxy surrounding it starts to soften. Just a (very) few seconds of heating and out they come. I picked up this idea from reading around the stitch and glue boat building subject and in particular from Samuel Devlin's Boat Building book. Mr Devlin actually uses a car battery and a pair of jump leads rather than a namby pamby soldering iron but then he does generally work on a larger scale than my little lapstrake canoe. The same heating technique worked for most of the wires running through the stem and stern fillets as well – but not all, as the copper wire has a low tensile strength. It got me wondering about using steel wire at those points on the hull in any future project.

It did not seem a practical proposition to completely remove the ties holding the bulkheads in place although again I wondered if in future steel wire might work the trick here as well. However I threaded the bulkhead ties through larger holes than the rest of the ties and this made it simpler to cut them off flush with the outside of the hull. I could also bend some of them back into their holes below the hull surface. I found that I did not need to worry about the odd copper wire end poking up through the planks though as the copper is pretty soft and sands off easily with 80 grit paper.

After a couple of work sessions I had all of the wire ties removed. I was now the proud possessor of a canoe hull with nearly seven hundred holes in it – not all below the water line though.

Construction - part eight

Mike Griffiths (guest blogger) bends it like Beckham

Balls, you ask? No canoe planks! With the last set of planks stitched in, it was time to (I quote the book) “pull the planks together at bow and stern”. The book further suggests that this could be a fight and that a spring clamp or two might be needed to position things. A few practice flexes of the hull halves suggested that all this was true – and then some. Plus I should point out that the ends of the copper ties are sharp – this adds some pain and the odd shallow but painful gash to the process.

Inside and outside shots before stitching bow and stern

Slacking off the first three ties along the keel helped the first two planks to flex enough to allow me to start drawing the bow and stern together – but (of course) I need these ties in place to help get the bottom two planks to twist into shape. Note – spring clips immediately slide off stressed planks and fly across the room with a “ping” sound. Did I mention that the ends of copper wires are sharp? Oh yes I did – and they are. If you decide to build a stitch and glue canoe, recruit an assistant for this stage – and get someone with strong hands who is reasonably impervious to pain. You can do it by yourself though – I can't even begin to describe how – but you can. Working slowly from the keel line and allowing the wood to rest at a couple of stages seemed to work. Whoopee! I have something that looks quite like a canoe – well ish. The stem and stern were a bit wobbly and the overall shape was a little bit odd but it was a good start.

Placing a spreader stick measured to just short of the canoe's designed beam at the centre line helped with the overall shape but it then needed some adjustment with a mallet to bring each pair of planks properly into line and to fair the stems overall – well in one dimension. The other dimension needed a couple of lengths of wood screwed and clamped to the canoe to bring them exactly into line. One thing you learn is that even dimensionally matched pairs of planks do not bend equally without some encouragement – the minor differences in the internal plies in the board affect the rate of (and resistance to) bending. The “gains” are a weak point as well and do not help bring the ends of the boat naturally into line.

The continued sub-zero day time temperatures and a couple of days of snow falls meant that I ended up lofting the lines of the bulkheads and decks on the kitchen table. Sawing them out had to be done outside in the big barn but the physical effort generated some heat to counteract the cold. The Japanese style pull saw came into it's own here and the resulting pieces needed almost no finishing. I am really getting into this tool – it is just about the saw of choice now for close and accurate work.

Ready to start tightening all of those wires.

The good book says that fitting the bulkheads is “one of the hardest chores in boat building”. Amen to that. The holy writ also suggests that the bulkheads could move an inch or two either way to get a good fit. In my youth I spent me leisure hours with a fun group where most of the guys worked in the (then still vibrant) Chatham dockyards. We had a little mantra that went something like this:

“An electrician works to the neatest quarter of an inch. A joiner to the nearest sixteenth. A millwright to the nearest thousandth and a shipwright to the nearest ship.”

I have probably missed one or two trades but you get the drift I am sure. I suspect that the canoe project has just shifted from the domain of the joiner to the domain of the shipwright.

Next weekend seems to be dominated by some sort of winter solstice celebration – named after some chap called Noel. There was a hint that I was not supposed to spend most of my free time outside boat building so there might be a short gap before I report on the process of gluing the hull.

Construction - part seven

Mike Griffiths (guest blogger) is routed and then stitched up.

My canoe construction project had got to the point where I was gluing the half planks together to form the full length strakes used to construct the canoe body.

These two planks being glued side by side give a better view of the curvature that needs to be accurately maintained right through the joint

All of the planks were glued before the weekend and I was looking forward to cutting the rebates in the bottom edges to manage the overlaps that create the lapstrake effect. Both days were cold – the thermometer showed 2C and there was a strong North Easterly wind – no idea what the temperature was taking the chill factor into account but it was most unpleasant in our big barn where my workbench was set up ready to start work. The doors needless to say faced North and I needed them open for the light. Still – this was my opportunity to advance the project, so with gritted teeth...

It might seem odd for me to say that it was a bad thing that my first run with a router along a piece of test plywood went well. In fact it went swimmingly – like a hot knife through butter and with a perfect 9mm wide rebate just 1.5mm deep. So that made that decision – the router it was for this job even if this was the first time I had used it. The reason why the test run was not great was that the first real plank I rebated fought tooth and nail. I was not ready for the variability in the grain of the plywood layers as I advanced down the plank. I learned though and learned how to deal with the feedback from the router. Like everything else this was skill to be acquired.

I also had to cut the “gains” at the end of each rebate – allowing the planks to be drawn together at the two stems. I found that a combination of a small rebate plane and a sanding block was best for this final step in the shaping of the planks.

I had to drill 1.5mm holes every six inches along every edge of the bottom planks and along the top edges of plank sets two to four. I used the little jig advised by the book to assist in placing the holes accurately and drilled through each pair of planks together.

My simple drilling jig and the routed rebate along on plank.

The next step was to start stitching the planks together – but first I needed at least 300 short pieces of copper wire. I could not locate bare copper wire anywhere in my locality so set about stripping the plastic insulation off metre after metre of 1.5mm electrical wire. My younger daughter helped in clipping the lengths to around 10cm while I risked injury stripping the plastic coating using a Stanley knife. She watched “X Factor” while she clipped and I watched my thumb.

The weather forecast for the next week showed temperatures dipping below (and staying below) zero. This persuaded me that I would have to manage the next phase of the canoe construction in my office – which I could heat enough to keep from shivering too violently – and even warm up to a comfortable level when I next need to apply some epoxy resin. Of course, that makes lofting the bulkheads and decks problematic – perhaps I can borrow the kitchen table for that task – well maybe.

I extended the width of the two metal trestles I had to a tad more than the planned width of the canoe by drilling through the top bars and screwing some softwood to the top edge. I set these up and draped the first two planks (those that will form the bottom of the canoe) over them. I say draped because all five pairs of planks were very flexible and difficult to handle even allowing for my caution when moving them - I wanted to avoid (even more) accidental damage that might be difficult to repair.

I used the copper wire to stitch the two bottom planks together along the keel line. I then opened out the two planks and flexed them a little to get the two edges to butt together. I then fetched the next two planks to stitch to the first two. Offering them up got me very worried as the next two planks seemed too long. I hastily re-checked the lengths of both plank sets against the plan offsets – but they appeared to be in order. Even allowing for the fact that the next two planks were going to have to follow the curved edge of the bottom plank I could not see how I would not end up with too much plank at one end of the canoe. I re-read my bible (“The Canoe Shop” by Chris Kulczycki) – and there was a hint that this inequality would be evident at this stage. Also on close inspection, one of the pictures in the book showed an overlap between the first and second planks during the stitching process. Relieved? Well a bit – I decided to reserve judgement.

Once I had got part way through stitching the first of these planks to the bottom pair I felt the project change. The planks started to stiffen up as they took on the curves and the whole thing began to feel like it might become a boat. It might sound silly to say it but the canoe was starting to take on a life of its own.

A number 3 plank waiting to be stitched into the canoe.

Stitching on a plank involved drilling a hole just above the rebate opposite each of the pre-drilled holes in the adjoining plank. With a little twist the 1.5mm copper wire passed through the 1.5mm hole. I could then use some long nosed pliers to pull the wire through and to apply an initial twist or two to complete each stitch. I pressed a small piece of plywood to the back of the plank where I was drilling the holes to minimise any damage to the outer ply as the drill broke through – added the possibility of drilling into my fingers I suppose but (so far) no spectacular blood letting.

Construction - part six

Mike Griffiths (guest blogger) gets stuck into gluing.

I left off my tale of building a lapstrake canoe at the point where the scarf joints needed to turn the half planks into full length planks had been cut. Now all I needed to do was glue those joints. This was another scary stage as the planks are all curved and that curve needs to run smoothly and regularly through the glued joint. The canoe plans provided offsets from a line drawn between the end of the planks and the edge of the plank at the point where the joint should be made. However ensuring that the planks actually end up being glued in that position looked problematical at first.

The first thing I did was to buy three sheets of cheap composite board that looks like it is made from wood shavings. The ones I ended up with were narrow but had tongues and grooves along their edges making it simple to join them into a continuous strip. I nailed the joints to hold the sheets in register as I wanted to be able to draw a continuous line down their length. I was not going to rely upon this line but it helped get the planks roughly in position – I then re-checked that positioning using a line of string. I placed the first pair of half planks from one of the sets into position with the scarfs carefully overlapped and (after double checking all of the measurements) then drove pins into the board tightly alongside the ends and in a couple of positions along the top edge of each plank. This gave me a jig for setting up the second plank. After checking that the fit still worked for the second plank I mixed up a batch of epoxy resin – my first.

Mixing the resin was a new experience but the resin pumps supplied along with the West resin and hardener ensured that the mix was correctly proportioned. I had to thicken the mix using some colloidal silica – another first that needed some experimentation to get the thickness right. The book said to make the mix the same consistence as “jam” but I have met a lot of different jams in my time. In the end I went with apricot conserve.

I applied the epoxy to both surfaces of the joints of both planks. The planks were set in position within my mini jig with pieces of polythene sheet under and between the sheets. The joints were clamped using a short section of timber screwed into the boarding just outside the edges of the plank joints again separated with a strip of polythene.

With plenty of epoxy left over I then glued up two of the oak lengths destined to form inwales or outwales. These I clamped using plastic spring clamps as these would not stick to the epoxy and clearly had sufficient clamping strength to hold the scarf joint tightly closed. Three clamps per joint seemed optimal.

I had pre-heated the gluing area to about 16C (roughly 60F in old money) and ensured that the epoxy and hardener were also warmed through so they flowed properly – it was a bit chillier outside so a small fan heater did the trick. Now all I had to do was wait for the epoxy to cure.

The first canoe plank clamped in my gluing jig plus two oak lengths made from three 2 metre lengths clamped and curing.

Next come the other four plank sets and two more oak lengths. I also have to play around with the router to determine if I should use that or a rebate plane to cut the plank rebates – but that is getting ahead of myself.

Construction - part five

Mike Griffiths (guest blogger) continues his canoe construction story with plane tales.

I finished off sawing out the remaining sets of planks rather more quickly than the first couple of sets. By the time I had cut the fifth set I was reasonably happy that I was on top of the task. I was feeling so happy with progress that i went back and re-lofted and then re-cut one of the sets that I rather felt I had made a “pigs ear” of (now that's a phrase I have not heard in a long time - appropriate though).

With five plank sets now sawn out I had next to plane them to their lines. Planing a curved line seems just a bit disingenuous before you start and planing the inside of a curve even more so. However with a sharp block plane it can be done quite quickly. This was my final chance to ensure that my curves were fair (the canoe's you understand and not any personal love handles) and that the cut lines were square – giving me four half planks from each set that were as near as possible identical. By the time I had completed the last set I was really getting a feel for the tool. I suspect that a constant feature of this project will be the feeling that I am just achieving some measure of competence as I complete each phase. Is this why Paul described boat building as addictive? Not so much an addition perhaps but a desire to see what you can do starting out with better honed skills.

I now had to cut the scarf joints to make each pair of half planks a single full length plank. The scarfs should form a 1 in 8 ramp for optimal strength so, as each sheet of plywood is six millimetres thick, the ramps should be about forty eight millimetres long. The plans made provision for a one inch overlap on each half plank so I went for a five centimetre ramp – just about two inches long. Most builders cut their scarfs with a block plane but after a practice run on the discarded plank set I decided to try using a belt sander.

It is best to cut all four ramps for a plank set together as the staircase formed by aligning one plank end with the start of the ramp for the next automatically gives you the correct cutting angle. How cool is that?

Nearly half way through cutting one set of scarf joints. Just a bit wobbly but that can be corrected

Just checking that a finished scarf ramp is level

I made up a simple jig to help me cut the scarf joints on the oak lengths that will make up the inwales and outwales. This allowed me to quickly and accurately cut the 16 joints required in around 10 minutes (perhaps 20 if you want to include making the jig) – a lot less work than planing them or even using the belt sander. Now can anyone thing of a use for all those oak wedges?

Scarf jig for the table saw – the same 1 in 8 ramp as for the plywood planks.

Construction - part four

Mike Griffiths (guest blogger) gets to grips with his saw.

Cutting out the planks

This is the stage in canoe construction where you turn four sheets of expensive marine plywood into 20 well formed half planks of a canoe or, perhaps, just a small pile of sawdust and a stack of “off-cuts”. So much depends upon the accuracy of the preceding lofting process as well as the 'saw action'.

The half planks are cut from four sheets of marine ply sandwiched together. The idea is to ensure that both ends of the canoe are identical and (more importantly) that both sides of the canoe are identical. The alternative would be to end up with a canoe that did not fit together or only paddled in circles. It is important to ensure that the four sheets stay “in register” while each half plank set is cut out. The best approach is to nail or screw the sheets together at various points between the marked out planks – avoiding the cutting lines and larger waste areas that might come in useful at some later date.
Then, as each plank is cut from the sheet, the section hanging over the edge of the working surface can be clamped to keep everything tightly controlled as it is cut away.

My plan was to cut the planks out by hand. I had modified a Stanley 1-15-215 floorboard saw by grinding off the teeth on the upper/front curved face of the blade to stop these wider teeth jamming in the kerf when I was sawing at a low angle through the boards. I had also been reading that many expert woodworkers favour a Japanese ‘pull’ saw (in particular a ‘ryoba noko giri’) as they cut on the pull rather than push stroke and this allows the blade to be very thin with a very narrow kerf – ideal for this sort of project. Quality Japanese woodworking tools might be expensive but Irwin do a very reasonably priced version with two cutting edges. So a “head to head” between these two saws was in the offing.

Irwin version of ‘ryoba nook giri’ pull saw and the less exotic Stanley floorboard saw – prior to my modification

I elected to screw the four sheets of plywood together at intervals along the waste areas. I decided that screws would be easier than nails  to remove if they proved to be in the way. After one last look to check that my plank outlines matched the curves and lines of the sketch in the book I set to.

The Stanley saw was first up. I am a frequent enough saw user to have some confidence in what I am doing and this saw was spot on for accuracy – it followed the plank curves well and effortlessly held a pretty constant distance of less than a millimetre from the pencil lines. The snag was that progress was slow. At 13 teeth to the inch (now there is a non-metric standard measure) I suppose I should have expected this but progress was frustrating.

The Irwin “pull” saw made much faster progress – but – you knew there was a but – this was my first attempt to work with this new style of saw. I found it difficult to keep my saw cut close enough to the lines on a long cut – thus increasing the amount of work required to complete the cutting and shaping of each set of planks. Having said that, the advantages of this style of saw were becoming apparent – I just needed more practice. I suspect that I am going to become a frequent user of this saw and I can’t wait to use it on some jobs where it’s fine cut is going to be a real benefit.

So which saw is the best for this task then? Remember that I am cutting roughly twenty five linear metres through 2.4 centimetres of African mahogany. The winner is – “save up and buy a decent jig saw!”.

No seriously, (homespun philosophy moment) – once you have achieved proficiency with a hand tool then you will find the equivalent power tool finished the job faster – but no more easily. Power tools are not always better. This is just a longish job that is worth taking time over. I had far more fun ripping a couple of oak planks on the table saw to extract some lengths 2.5 centimetres wide to scarf together to form the inwales and outwales of the canoe. Given that I ended up buying two metre planks then I will have to cut 16 scarf joints to achieve the (roughly) five linear metres required – so one of the next tasks will be to make a simple jig to cut the scarfs as the time will be repaid in accuracy and efficiency.

Why were my planks only two metres long when this part of France is virtually a continuous oak forest? Well, most consumers of oak timber are artisan carpenters. They all have planer/thicknesers and band saws and can buy the pretty crude pieces of timber available from the saw mills. I could have easily purchased a slice through a tree trunk but would have had extreme difficulty in getting the required lengths out of that. So it was buy what was available at the DIY level or involve a local artisan to prepare the lengths of oak for me.

More from me when I have finished sawing – which might be a while as a combination of family commitments and entertaining look like “taking out” the coming weekend one way and another.

Construction - part three

Mike Griffiths (guest blogger) gets a little side tracked during his canoe construction.

The challenge of cutting out the five half planks of a lapstrake canoe from a sandwich of four sheets of marine ply looked daunting without a good working surface to support the job. The only existing work surfaces available for carpentry (my wife is not inclined to let me use the kitchen table) are an odd collection. They consist of a badly repaired Chinese copy of a “workmate”, a couple of adjustable trestles and a broken occasional table. The one unifying feature being that none of them are exactly the same height. I needed something to support the sheet material properly, set at a level suitable for sawing.

The initial plan was to use a couple of sheets of kitchen/bathroom grade chipboard (the green coloured variety) as the work-surface and to construct some arrangement of timber to support it. The serendipitous find of some cast iron legs holding a rotting plank in the damp corner of one of the barns changed the plan – I now had a base from which to construct a proper work bench. With a breakfast mug of tea in hand, I went through the timber stack to see if any combination of pieces gave me inspiration. A number of scenarios presented themselves while I drank my tea but in the end I settled for simplicity (and a slice of toast). Three timbers of similar thickness bolted to the iron legs with a narrow length of chipboard between two of them. I am not entirely sure what this valley arrangement is for but I definitely recall that the work-benches we used in woodwork class at school had them so they must be important. See! I did pick up something during those years of ‘durance vile’ at grammar school.

The result, as you can see from the pic, is unlikely to meet the approval of a master joiner and certainly not my old woodwork teacher but might, just, pass for an amateur canoe builder. At least it is robust – so robust in fact that it is just about impossible to move. I plan to rebate a channel between the two butted timbers and fill that with a slice of the same wood (to avoid losing small things down the gap) plus the wood needs belt sanding – oh and I will add a vice. Hmn – this is building into a project of it’s own. I have already spent the time I might otherwise have used to cut the canoe planks building this monster – so perhaps back to plan A – lay the chipboard on top of my new platform to get a smooth surface and get on with the cutting out.
So I came up with a simple, indirect way to screw the sheets to the (putative) workbench and “voila” I now have a strong, rigid and demountable table ready to saw my planks. (The back edge looks a bit curved in the picture but in fact it is nice and straight.)

In other exciting news – Paul rang up to say that he was posting me a container of wood dust. My wife Tracy was under-whelmed when she heard about this gift – thinks we have altogether too much dust as it is. The wood dust will be used to thicken the epoxy resin when it is used to form a fillet or when used as stopping in areas that will later be varnished. Mixed with this wood dust the result will be a closer colour match to the mahogany (okoume) faces of the marine plywood. In other areas colloidal silica can be used as a thickener for the epoxy resin.

Next time I will be back on track and doing some actual canoe building.

Construction - part two

Mike Griffiths (guest blogger) continues his chronicle of a canoe construction.

Lofting the lines

What a grandiose term for the process of transferring some 90 odd measurements from a book to a sheet of marine ply. It evokes the days of craftsmanship, wooden sailing ships and the shipwrights that built them. Back to reality, I am building a lapstrake canoe and using some pretty modern materials to do it.

Essential tools for lofting proved to be a good quality ruler, a sharp pencil and a large set square – oh and an eraser. My set square is metric but that does not matter – size is the key here with my 40 centimetre model proving only just big enough. Using a cheap “mechanical” pencil proved to be the best way of always having a sharp point – and you can buy them by the packet for very little.

“Measure twice and cut once” goes the refrain but in reality measuring more than twice looks like a good policy. I crosschecked the offsets by calculating and then measuring the plank widths at each station. I am not sure just how paranoid one should be about accuracy. The fact that you only have a set number of fixed points along the curve of a given plank (one for each ‘station’ set at twelve inch intervals) makes me think that minor inaccuracies can be resolved when drawing a fair curve between them. I also assume that any errors in the published table or (more likely) in my reading of that table should become reasonably obvious when drawing the curves. I would not expect to see anything other than a smooth line along the whole length. Humps or hollows would imply an error somewhere.

In truth, once into the swing of things, marking out the offsets does not take much more than an hour. Now the interesting bit – drawing in the curves.

Good news on clamps - you may remember that, in my first post, I wrote that I need at least sixteen clamps for this project. Paul suggested I look at 'F' clamps and I have found that the local “pile it high and sell it not quite as expensive as the others” builder's merchant has pairs of 'F' clamps at €1.30 the pair. They also had large spring clamps at around a Euro a piece.

Curve Drawing

My trusty guide and inspiration, Chris Kulczycki’s “The Canoe Shop” suggests that the best way to draw the curves that form the upper and lower edges of each plank is to hammer a panel pin into the lofted marks at each ‘station’ and to push a flexible wooden or metal lath against the pins – drawing a fair line against the curved lath. Our blog host Paul has posted pictures of the non-slip weights that he uses to hold a lath against the waypoints on a curve – these are the business as you need something to hold the lath in position – unless you are blessed with more than the usual complement or arms.

I ended up using a combination of pins, weights, spare hand and my knees to get my lines drawn in. Again, this is not a lengthy process. I took the opportunity to re-check every measurement but otherwise found that each plank took shape fairly quickly. I did have to check that my lath was square as it had a tendency to twist slightly so I needed to check that before running my pencil down it’s edge.

I am slightly embarrassed to have to admit that I have got to my current (great?) age without realising ‘till now what the wedge shaped back end of a cross-peen hammer was for. I now understand that it is to start panel pins held between finger and thumb – how brilliant! I have been using a French cross-peen hammer – a style that I have always regarded as looking somewhat crude. This one at least, is nicely balanced and a delight to use. Anyone with a twelve year old son will know why I had to buy a new one – my rather more stylish wooden handled one is “out there somewhere” along with quite a few other tools silently “borrowed”, never to be seen again.

Pictures of some beautiful cross-peen hammers made by Lie-Nielsen Toolworks (they make tools a work of art) and then my more workaday French equivalent from the builder’s merchant.

The hardest curve to draw is the first twenty odd centimetres of the garboard plank (the one that forms the bottom of the canoe). This curve is quite tight and detailed offsets are not available to those of us too mean to purchase the full sized plans. This curve must smoothly run into the slightly convex flow of the next 90 centimetres or so of what will become the line of the keel. A ‘flexible curve’ – basically a length of lead between two steel ribbons with a moulded plastic outer - proved helpful in getting this to look right. This simple device retains it’s shape allowing you to make minor adjustments until the overall curve is fair.

Construction - it's contagious

I had been warned by Paul at Fyne Boats that building kayaks and canoes is addictive, but I had not realised that it is also contagious. Brother Mike has started a build, and his experiences so far appear below as a guest entry.

Whatever you choose to build, you are likely to need to create 'fair' curves and I favour the following method for holding a batten in place.

The 'pots' are filled with lead and weight about 1.7Kg. The base of each pot has 4 screws that protrude a small distance from within the pot. These provide a stable base on a wooden work surface while being resistant to sideways pressure.

Anyway, enough excitement from me - some thoughts from Mike.

Guest Blogger

Mike Griffiths (guest blogger) starts a chronicle of his canoe construction.

The project is to build a canoe for paddling on the great rivers of France – which is where I live. The chosen design comes from a book titled “The Canoe Shop” by Chris Kulczycki and the 16ft Sassafras lapstrake (clinker) canoe is constructed from 6mm marine ply and epoxy resin.

I am going to skip lightly over the trials of locating reasonably priced marine ply in France in general and in the rural ‘department ‘of the Dordogne in particular. Suitable timber merchants and boat chandlers are in very short supply this far from the sea. However, West epoxy resin and five sheets of marine ply eventually turned up so the project could move from the conceptual phase to the practical – or to put it another way, it was time to stop faffing about and actually get some boat building work done.

I was aware that the canoe plans (and in particular the table of offsets) were a product of the USA but once my pencil was sharpened ready to start marking out the boat planks on a sheet of ply it was still a bit of a shock to realise that I was expected to do this in inches – to the nearest 16th * (see below). Fortunately, my toolbox came up with a slightly rusted metal rule calibrated to that great old British measure. Just to be sure (I had been caught out with quarts once) I checked that US inches were the same. I found out that, while they were not quite the same, the tiny difference could safely be ignored. I was also most entertained to discover that in July 1959 the US inch had been redefined to be exactly 2.54 centimetres long. Now you would have though that it might have occurred to our US cousins that re-calibrating one of their fundamental units of measurement to a size defined by an international standard might be a good basis from which to go the whole hog but – well clearly that did not happen.

The canoe is constructed from five pairs of identical planks (or more properly strakes, see below **). The bow and stern sections of each plank are identical so ‘lofting’ the lines of the canoe requires you to lay out one half of each of the five different planks on a single sheet of 2.4 metre by 1.2 metre ply. The idea is that you will then cut the design out from four sheets of ply clamped together thus ending up with 20 half planks ready to be scarfed together into ten full planks, each about 16ft (4.8 metres) long. Hefting the first sheet of ply down onto my office floor to mark out the design convinced me that handling and cutting four thicknesses together was going to require a little more support than the general ramshackle collection of collapsible benches and props I have used for woodworking in the past. So the first proper construction task is going to be knocking up a suitable bench from some spare timbers and a couple of part sheets of flooring grade chipboard that are, fortuitously, to be found in the barn.

Tools are another issue as well. It is clear from my copy of “The Canoe Shop” that a reasonable number of woodworking tools was going to be required to complete the cutting and shaping of the marine ply. This is one of those temptation moments – on the strength of a single project you suddenly get giddy and start to plan the purchase of one of everything. Fortunately common sense prevailed and a sensible evaluation of the tools already available suggested a much reduced shopping list. This was a chance to learn to use that router that has been sitting on a shelf waiting for it’s opportunity but it was clear that I was going to need a new fine toothed saw plus a low angled block plane for cutting the scarfs. Clamps were another issue – it looks like fitting the inwales and outwales was going to be one of those jobs where you just can’t have too many clamps. The book suggests that between 16 and 32 clamps would be adequate but that you would need twice as many if you wanted to glue on both gunwales at once. I found I had four good G clamps which left me with something of a deficit. Unfortunately the season for “les vides grainier” (the equivalent of car boot sales here in France – garage sales I think they are in the US) is just about over; so filling in that gap might prove more difficult and costly than one would hope.

Anyway – it is time to start putting pencil marks on a piece of plywood – the first step of many towards conjuring a canoe from the sheets of board leaning against my office bookcase. Enough of procrastination! Now where did I put that pencil I sharpened?

* I must admit that to a software developer like myself halves, quarters, eights and sixteenths have a certain binary appeal but when you get down to it millimetres rule. I did think of converting the offsets to the metric system but with some 90 points to plot one is almost certain to introduce an error. In any case, building a lapstrake canoe has a certain anachronistic appeal – so why not go the whole hog.

** While the 5 planks forming one side of this canoe should properly be called strakes the individual timbers are named (from the bottom) the garboard plank, the first broad plank, the second broad plank, the third broad plank and the sheer plank. Which clears the naming up nicely I think – strakes they are then.

Making the double

By popular demand, some info and picks about making the double kayak.

I started by ordering plans for the Chesapeake Double, but was advised that it was really a lake tourer for 'Fat Americans' - stereotype or tautology depending on your point of view, and that I should consider the Sport Tandem instead.
Unfortunately, the plans revealed that this was too long to fit in the workshop, and so with some trepidation, I decided to have a go at adapting a design in 'The New Kayak Shop' by Chris Kulczycki. Essentially it is a cut and shut design, stretching a Chesapeake by adding about 18 inches of length to the mid-section, while (hopefully) retaining the proven lines. This left some anxiety about exactly where to place the cockpits, and how to arrange the deck line such that the forward paddler was not 'swamped' - hence the 'step'.

Construction pictures: