I rescued this little red sprit sail from the dump ten years ago and finally got around to making a quick and dirty set of spars for it yesterday. A fun toy for very light winds and exciting in a gust! ___ This post was originally featured on our Instagram feed. See the original...
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Developing the canoe plans
We post occasionally about shooting video, but the other half of our online instruction is the plan sets. Liz has been translating sketches and notes into diagrams and documentation as we head into the final stretch before we release the canoe designs. Rather than a traditional set of boat plans, the plan set accompanying...
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Claire stopped by a few weeks ago to test
Claire stopped by a few weeks ago to test paddle an F1. She’s building her own this winter for a solo kayak journey from source to sea on the Columbia River next summer. She’ll spend 3 months paddling 2000 kilometres between Canal Flats BC and Astoria Oregon, documenting the journey in photographs and an...
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My latest cockpit arrangement for the new canoes
Pictured above is my latest cockpit arrangement for the new canoes. 4 inch diameter pool noodles lashed to either side makes this canoe self dumping when turned on its side in a rescue scenario. The Thermarest RidgeRest pad becomes a $20 seat that can be folded or moved in lots of different configurations but...
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Salvage canoe paddle: Part 2
Salvage canoe paddle: Part 2, Found a broken coffee table on the side of the road and couldn’t resist. Shaft, Douglas fir. Blade, some wood I had hoped was Cherry, but wasn’t....
Salvage canoe paddle: Part 1
Salvage canoe paddle: Part 1 Found this broken coffee table on the side of the road and couldn’t resist. Shaft, Douglas fir. Blade, some wood that I had hoped was cherry, but wasn’t....
Lukas’s F1 kayak
It’s been all canoes, all the time the last few weeks while we prep the building course for release, but check out this F1 built by Lukas in Vermont, from our kayak building course and plans. Lukas documented his whole build on the Student Builds blog on our website. We love to see the...
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Canoe fitting
Canoe fitting. Tom is going to be carrying this canoe for 33 days, climbing over 125 miles to an altitude over 17,000 ft, so trying the canoe on for size seemed like a good idea. When I heard about what Tom and Kyle of The Weight We Carry are doing – carrying canoes to...
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14’ full size solo canoe with an 11′ double-paddle canoe
14’ full size solo canoe with an 11' double-paddle pack canoe. 29lbs and 17lbs respectively. We're packing up the 14 footer and its nesting sister canoe this week to send to Nepal with The Weight We Carry, where they'll be portaged to Everest base camp....
Early morning in the shop
Early morning in the shop, building stuff, teaching stuff, filming stuff....
Five canoes, one van.
Five canoes, one van. Earlier in the day it was seven. So happy with how nesting these has worked out for transport and storage....
Intro videos for my video courses are my nemesis
Intro videos for my video course are my nemesis. Even my normal instruction videos usually take a couple dozen takes to get things right, but when it comes to the intro videos I get seriously picky about every 1/3rd stop of light, every millimeter of microphone placement, every spoken syllable. I’ve always been envious...
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Video: The Parks planer devouring some reclaimed fir
With a steady diet of silica and tannic acid working with bending Oak and reclaimed Douglas Fir is a mouthful for any planer. This direct drive 1942 Parks planer chows down....
All ten canoe prototypes on the beach
As an early celebration of the upcoming canoe plan and video release, we took advantage of the beautiful fall weather and took all ten prototypes down to the river for a group paddle. Now it's head down for a few weeks of video and plan edits to get these launched....
I never take for granted the quality of the wood that I’m privileged to work with
I never take for granted the quality of the wood that I’m privileged to work with. The Oregon white oak I use is in my opinion, the king of steam bending woods, it is tough, rot resistant and bends like butter after a short steaming time. I buy this stuff from Zena Forest Products,...
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