Playing With Boats

The Canadian Canoe Museum in Peterborough, Ontario is setting up a new workshop and teaching space called the Living Tradition Workshop. Created in honour of Walter Walker, the eminent Lakefield Ontario builder of wooden canoes (primarily in the longitudinal strip technique) who passed away two years ago at 101, the new space will be used to share the techniques of canoe building, repair and restoration with museum visitors. It should be open by early fall this year.

The museum has a long history and quite a bit of expertise in dealing with birchbark, wood-canvas and longitudinal strip canoes. Until now, however, they haven’t had a chance to spend much time with the kind of lightweight lapstrake construction that was one of the main techniques of recreational canoe building in the later years of the 19th century. What better way to inaugurate the new workshop than to build a little lapstrake canoe?

The canoe I chose for this project is called Fiddlehead, and was designed by Harry Bryan. Harry is a frequent contributor to WoodenBoat and has a fine eye for a sheerline and a traditional hull. He also has a unique design philosophy, and his website is replete with beautiful small boats with a minimal environmental footprint.

 Fiddlehead is a flat-bottomed version of the kind of small double-paddle canoe popularized by John MacGregor and his Rob Roy designs in the early years of recreational canoeing by way of J.H. Rushton’s famous Wee Lassie.She can can be built in three sizes, but I’ve chosen the smallest, 10 1/2′ overall, because it will work best for classes where we’re building multiple boats and has all the features of lapstrake construction in a nice compact package. Here’s what she’ll look like when she’s done. That’s Harry himself at the helm.

The museum’s new workshop is still under construction, so I’ve started the canoe in my shop at home to get the project rolling. Here’s the first part of a Fiddlehead construction diary.

Every project begins with careful study of the plans and instructions.

The bottom is made from three white cedar planks, edge-glued together with epoxy.

Once the bottom planks are glued together, the squeezed-out glue is planed off and the bottom is sanded. And now the usual disclaimers about safe shop practices. 1) Yes, I do have bare feet; 2) no, I don’t normally do that in the workshop, but when you’re taking pictures of yourself with the self-timer and not really working but only pretending to work, that’s what sometimes happens; 3)I also don’t normally wear safety glasses when using a low-angle block plane (notwithstanding what the product liability lawyers might have recommended) but in this case I have reading lenses in my safety glasses so I don’t beat up my good glasses in the shop.

The width of the bottom at certain stations is transferred from the plans (see, I have my steel-toed safety Birkenstocks on in this photo!)

To be continued. . .