IS THERE ANYTHING PRETTIER THAT FLOATS
THAN A CEDAR STRIP CANOE?
Building a Cedar Strip Canoe has been one of my biggest projects. Even today, almost two years after I started to build it, it is stil not complete.
I would love to build some great seats, but I have been unable to find the material that I need. By the way, if anyone comes across any thin, plastic
cane please let me know.
It's actually a funny story how I decided to build this canoe. I had bought a book several years earlier that gave step by step instruction on how to build one.
I have a friend that owned a cedar mill, and he was selling 6 - 8 inch cedar boards that did not pass the inspection of the company that he was working with.
Every board was between 5/8 to 7/8 inches thick, and they sold for a $1 a piece. I bought 20 boards which were also between 8 - 10 feet long.
I had no idea what I was going to do with them, but I stored them away in my garage.
A couple months later my father was working on a remolding job, and he had to gut out a building. The building had a whole floor of 3/4 inch plywood in the attic,
and he asked me if I would like any. Never turning away any free wood, I decided to take 4 full sheets. At this point, I had the material to make my forms, and the cedar
to build the canoe, although I still did not realize that I would build it.
Soon after, I rediscovered my book and then it hit me. The next day I started cutting out the forms and building the strongback.
This is actually the first strip that I placed on the forms. This was also one of the easiest. I used staples to get the strip into place, and I had great strips to choose
from. I needed two strips to make it across the whole canoe, and I connected them right on the form, which made it almost seamless. From this point on, I had to glue each strip on top
of the other, which had its own challenges.
At this point, I was halfway up the side and running into some problems. Since my strips were at different widths, I was matching up the strips as best I could.
I was finding that when I butted two strips together, I had to sand one side down to make it match. I was also starting to run into some problems with the curves of the forms
which I had to use 2 or 3 staples to make the strip stay.
The whole project took me about a year and a half to complete. I suffered my first major setback at this point in the project. While playing in a Mens league softball
game, I blew out my knee and tore my ACL. It happened in the middle of July, and I had surgery in the middle of August. It was the middle of September before I could work on the canoe again.
My strips were starting to thin out, and I had alot that I had to throw away due to knots in the wood or just being too wide.
Well, this is what it looks like finished, no more GLUE... I went through 5 bottles of wood glue, and I was tired of peeling it off my hands every night. The staples were still
in at this point, and it took forever to pull them all out. I used a screwdriver and pliers to pull them out. I have since learned that there is a tool
that specifically pulls out staples which would have been a whole lot easier. After all the staples were removed, it was time to scrape and sand. I used a standard paint scraper
to remove the glue runs and beads, and then used a belt sander to rub out the rough spots. This was alot of work.
Once the canoe was sanded, it was time to put the fiberglass on. There are a couple types of fiberglass. There is the standard fiberglass material, and then you can choose between
the Epoxy resin or the Polyester resin. The epoxy is supposed to hold better, but is much more expensive. I opted for the polyester resin basically because of the price, and so far it has been great.
I found a company on the internet out of Seattle that carried the full length fiberglass cloth wide enough to cover the canoe. I bought a section that was 4 feet wide by 60 feet long.
I put two layers on the outside, and one on the inside.
The most difficult part of the fiberglass was the ends. As you can see, I had quite a mess, but it all worked out fine. This was also the point of my second disaster. I live in
Northern Maine, and by the end of September it was much to cold outside to be using the resin. I was trying to get it done so I could put the canoe in my basement and sand out the inside of the
canoe. It was to cold outside when I put on the third coat of resin, it dried in waves. I was really bummed.
Once the outside was dry, I was able to turn the canoe over and take out the forms. This was an exciting time, I figued I would store it in my basement and sand out the inside over the
winter. Sanding the inside was much more difficult. The curves made it difficult to use the scraper and very tough to use the belt sander. Like I said before, this is Northern Maine
so I had plenty of time to sand over the winter.
The next spring I was able to bring the canoe back out, and finish the fiberglass. The inside layer turned out much better in the warmer temperatures and using one cloth was easier
than the two on the outside.
Building the gunwales was great. I went to a local lumber place, and the guy had some Cypress from Florida. He convinced me that this would be the
best wood for the gunwales. I would have liked to find some White Ash that was 20 feet long, but that was not going happen. I had the
Cypress cut down to 3/4 X 3/4 X 14. I had to splice two pieces together with a dowel so that they would be the correct length.
Next time, I would like to have some more clamps. You can see in the picture that I had to sand the outside fiberglass to try to take out the waves.
The pictures above and below are from my basement. I was trying to get the grain of the wood. It is so pretty and these pictures do not even start to do it justice.
Once the canoe was complete, we had a successful first launch and spent the afternoon on the lake. The canoe has great lines and glides across the water.
If you have any questions, have an idea where I can buy some cane, or have your own canoe, email me at Whiter23@yahoo.com