Working towards finishing the canoes today with a quick and dirty rough install of the seats with some hex cap 1/4-20 bolts and some random hardwood dowels. Once I test the boats and decide on final seat heights I’ll replace these with oval head machine screws and cup washers for a more finished appearance.
I was a little nervous drilling the holes on the larger canoes because getting things off angle could potentially result in the seat holes not lining up with the bolts in the dropped position. Not seeing an easy way to get it perfect, I just said heck with it and drilled everything by eye. The result wasn’t exact but it worked pretty well anyway. I set the solo canoe seat at 9 inches and the tandem seats at 10 1/2. We’ll see how that works out when we test them tomorrow.
Still can’t decide how I want to protect the ends (where all full size canoes are vulnerable). For these two I’m relying on the stitching for abrasion resistance on the stems and covering the keel at the ends with 1/8” foot long brass plates. Truthfully a 3 inch plate would be enough to cover that one tiny spot at the end of the keel where all skinboats wear through years before the rest of the boat has any issues.
A strip of brass quarter round running up the whole stem is even better but I hesitate the add 2 pounds if it’s not needed. As it is, a single foot long plate weighs 10oz. Next canoes I’ll try the quarter round and see how that feels and wears.
Float test tomorrow, then I’ll take it all apart and varnish all the bare wood I exposed fitting the seats. Might even varnish the gunwales for a fancier look.
Hopefully the seats are in the right place in the double. Trying to figure out where canoe seats go has been surprisingly challenging. There is huge variation among manufacturers and historic boats are a lot different than modern boats. I sort of averaged the results but I’m still skeptical that I got it even remotely right.
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