The seat that I’m fitting here is the contoured laminated ash seat sold by Northstar Canoes. At 55 bucks these extremely well-made seats are a fantastic deal. The lamination enables the contour but also adds significant strength.
The quarter inch hex head bolts holding the seat are a bit rough looking but because the seat itself is the only thwart in this canoe they are needed for strength. The seat is held in with star knobs, which facilitates easy removal for nesting. Previously I’ve used T nuts mounted directly into the seat and I can’t decide which I like better.
The sail set up is just my standard system which is included in the Canoe Building Course. It’s fairly easy to build and install and it works great to catch the occasional breeze but still tucks conveniently out of the way when not in use.
I’ve done everything to keep this canoe as light as possible while still making it very durable, so this time I went with 1/8” Delrin stem bands as opposed to the traditional brass which weighs 4 times as much. These need to be carefully piloted and countersunk, but otherwise I have a lot of hope for them as a stem protection material.
I’ll post all the specs for this canoe tomorrow along with my general impressions from the build, what I learned, and what I will do differently next time. Here’s the numbers for this last bit of the build:
Task times in minutes:
10 leveling the canoe and marking for the seat.
10 cutting the seat to length
5 saying prayers before drilling the first seat mounting hole
5 drilling the first hole, f***ing it up anyways, and cursing loudly
10 drilling the other three mounting holes without incident
10 oiling the seat ends and holes
60 rigging for sail
65 making and installing stem bands
Task times: 2 hrs 55 min
Total build time so far: 40 hrs 40 min
Actual time I spent working on the project: about 50 hrs
Note: I did the prep work for the canoe that will nest inside of this at the same time so that will cut about 10 hours off my next build.
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