Bending test ribs is one of the most important parts of our building process. This gives you some steam bending practice and also lets you dial in the perfect steaming time for your particular rib stock. More importantly it lets you double check the shape of the canoe before committing to cutting all of...
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George’s tandem canoe
Check out this tandem canoe built by one of our students using our plans and videos. This is George’s second canoe, he started with a solo before moving on to a tandem. Both boats nest together for transportation or storage, which is a standard part of our system. “I finished this last week and...
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Video: a super-simple test rudder
Super simple test rudder for my pedal-powered canoe project. This is just screwed together with a quick coat of oil because there is zero chance that the final version will look anything like this and I just wanted to basic platform to figure out blade area and overall geometry. Once I figure out the...
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Rory’s yellow cedar tandem canoe
The unique thing about our Skin on Frame Canoe Building System is that uses a mathematical formula rather than a strongback and mold to determine the sizing and shaping of the canoe. So rather than being a plan for a single canoe, it’s a plan for hundreds of different canoes just depending on how...
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Finally a bit more progress on the pedal power canoe
Finally a bit more progress on the pedal power canoe. I spent the last week measuring and testing the seating geometry of every pedal drive kayak I could get my hands on. Next I made a final decision on drive location, which was pretty brutal and amounts to nothing more than a coin toss,...
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Chewing on seat geometry
Been away from the shop for a couple days, but I’m back on the pedal powered canoe project and chewing pretty hard on the seating geometry. My starting point for this is the standard seating geometry from a Hobie mirage because they absolutely nailed the comfort in that boat which is much harder to...
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Video: a scrap wood prototype of the pedal drive box
Today I built a scrap wood prototype of the drive box to adapt the Hobie Mirage Drive to my skin on frame canoes. The first drive is a knock off of Hobie’s first generation Mirage drive called a Freedom Drive which retails for $325 and the second is Hobie’s current Mirage Drive 180 for...
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Testing boats and checking symmetry for the pedal drive adaptation
Today was a little bit of on the water testing, and a lot of frowning while chewing on details. Because I’m using the Mirage drive it made sense to actually try one before I install it, so I met a friend down at the dock to take a spin in his Hobie for a...
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Progress on the canoe build
Today I finished taking measurements for the plan worksheets and then I rounded off the rest of the stringers with the slick plane. (the quality of these has really gone downhill over the last few years, can anyone recommend a better radius plane for breaking edges?) After that, I made a stem template out...
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Switching focus to canoes
With Liz working on the plans for the recent kayak design updates, I’m switching gears to focus on canoes. Every year I try to update one of my building courses with the latest modifications and building techniques. This year it’s time for the Skin-on-Frame Canoe Building Course to get some fresh updates. My original...
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Karl’s solo canoe
Check out this lovely student built solo canoe! Karl is 6’0” 225 lbs and decides to go 31” wide and 14’8” long. With tumblehome it’s 29” wide at the gunwales. Normally I would advise a bit more length to float that weight, but Karl took an interesting approach to adding a progressive measurement to...
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Will’s quadruple nesting canoes
I am absolutely thrilled to share this quadruple nesting canoe build by Will, an Air Force pilot living in Illinois. Working with his wife and two young sons they completed these Canoes in 7 weekends and then took them on a river trip. All four of them fit together on top of a car!...
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On YouTube: Skin on frame Canoe Build Timelapse
I have no explanation for how this is possible but a couple days ago I realized that somehow I forgot to do the final edit on the canoe time-lapse I made a few years ago! So I spent the last couple days finishing the project. You can watch the full video below or on...
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Timelapse: Giovanni steambending his canoe ribs
Thank you to Abby of The Bainbridge Barn for sending me this video of one of my students steam bending the ribs in his canoe. I really like it sharing photos and videos of student builds because it helps people to see that you can get the same results without being an ‘expert’. If...
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Paul’s pack canoe
The cool thing about our canoe building system is that it gives you the freedom to modify the shaping for individual preferences. This pack canoe built by Paul in Dubuque Iowa is a little different than anything that I’ve done so far but it seems do you have turned out really nicely so I’ll...
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