Today I completed the canoe frame, drenched it in oil, then left it to dry outside for a couple days. My backyard is the sunniest spot so right now it’s sharing space with the vegetable garden. I’ve added some weights, clamps, straps, and struts to try to compensate for some of the shaping irregularities...
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Installing the pedal drive base plate
Today I took the plunge and install the base plate for the pedal drive. After 20 years of managing to avoid the stuff, I’m still feeling pretty indignant about all the epoxy work in this new modification. Unfortunately I just don’t see any way around it. On the positive side, I think there’s a...
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Video: making winders and lashing the canoe
On my kayaks, I normally hand wrap my winders but with so many stringers on a canoe I usually take a shortcut with the drill. These definitely aren’t as nice to lash with, but they’re a heck of a lot faster to make. The cord itself is a flat waxed artificial sinew that is...
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Timelapse: Another view of bending in the canoe ribs
Just another view of bending in the canoe ribs. Here you can see the bending technique really clearly. My secret? Good bending stock and steaming for the right amount of time, efficient workspace setup, and staying relaxed. It’s amazing the symmetry you can achieve by eye just by combining those four elements. Surprisingly., most...
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Video: Tool Tuesday: Makita trim router
My thoughts on the trim router from Makita, and using it as a substitution for a full-size plunge router for mortising your gunwales...
Timelapse: Steambending a solo canoe
Here we are filming an updated steam bending video for the canoe building course. Like I said in the last post, every couple years I synthesize the recent feedback from my students, and then update the videos accordingly. This new video should be in the course within a couple weeks. ___ This post was...
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Video: Steambox construction
Every couple years, I like to update my video courses based on what I’ve learned recently and feedback from students. This year I’m updating the canoe building course so I thought I would share a few clips here and there just to show some examples of our videos. The new steambox design is 1/8”...
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Bryce’s canoe test bend
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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Back to the easy part: building the actual boat
Now that I have working prototypes for the pedal drive, rudder, and seat, I can turn my attention back to the easy part: building the actual boat. This is the white oak that we chainsaw milled last month. The grain orientation was wrong for what I’m doing so I started by resawing it into...
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Some questions about marine glue ups and finishing
I have some questions about marine glue ups and finishing, and a bonus question about 3-D plastic printing for anyone who’s going to take pity on me: I’ve been doing a lot of epoxy work for the last few weeks, prepping all the parts for the canoe pedal drive and I have to be...
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Video: Cutting mortises and tenons in hardwood for the canoe seats
Finally bought the plunge base for the Makita cordless trim router to have a more convenient setup for the many smaller mortises I cut. In this case I’m using ash to make canoe seats. The tool can absolutely handle 3/4 inch deep mortises in a single pass but I usually do 2 passes in...
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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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Video: cutting tenons for the canoe seat
The good news is that I’m absolutely killing it here. The bad news is that IT in this case refers to the fine art of woodworking. It only took me two hours to get my crappy tools set up well enough to cut precise tenons (that I could’ve easily cut by hand in 15...
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David’s custom canoe seat
Check out this brilliant seat that one of my students designed for his pack canoe. David is an excellent craftsman and is one of the few people that we have given a commercial license to teach our designs. I like to keep things a bit more simple than this, (although you wouldn’t know it...
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