We spent the last couple weeks doing some major updates to the canoe building course and building the smallest solo canoe in the triple nesting set I’m building right now.
This canoe is 28 inches wide, 13’8” long and 11 1/4” deep. The sheer height is 1 1/2” taller in the bow than in the stern and the rocker is 1 3/4” inches. It is asymmetrical being a bit fuller in the stern than the bow. The gunwales and top two stringers are laminated red cedar, and the lower stringers and the keel are Port Orford cedar. The ribs are white oak and the outwales are hickory. The skin is 9 ounce nylon with four coats of two-part polyurethane. The stem bands are 3/8” brass half oval and the finished weight is 27.8 pounds.
The idea behind this canoe was to see how small of a canoe I could build that I would still be comfortable sitting up high and using a single bladed paddle. (I’m 5’8” 160 lbs) I also wanted to experiment with a major change to our rib length formula which thank God actually worked out just fine and helps simplify things. I made the top two stringers a bit fatter in hopes of encouraging slightly more primary stability which unfortunately I can’t verify the impact of without building an identical boat with normal stringers. Even if it did help I don’t think I would do it again though because it would be impossible to twist the wood to conform to the hull shape in anything but red cedar and I don’t like to include features in my boats that require regional-specific wood.
Although I will probably install a seat at some point, for right now I just have a kneeling thwart in place. I’ve been setting all my seats lately with T-nuts mounted directly into the seat which is something that I could see going very wrong at some point (like a cross threading one or damaging one on a wilderness trip) but so far I haven’t had a problem and it makes getting the seats in and out for nesting a snap.
I added brass stem bands to this canoe and the last one which is something I was originally against for reasons of weight and fussiness, but it just feels right on a canoe and I will probably keep doing it.
On the water video and a paddle report coming tomorrow!
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