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What Boat to Build Next: Part 2

Posted in Boat Building, Boating, Boats, Canoes, Sailing Canoes, Uncategorized, tagged , , , on December 31, 2011| Leave a Comment »

As I mentioned in the last post, I’ve started to explore whether the 1893 sailing canoe design Isalo would be suitable for re-designing for construction in modern materials. One of the first big questions to is how to build the boat.

If I follow through with the idea that this cruising canoe and the 16-30 are “bookends” that between them cover a nice range of sailing canoe history, then it would be best if Isalo was rendered in stitch-and-glue plywood. This has worked well for the 16-30s, proving to be light and durable and reasonably quick to build.

The body plan for the 16-30, showing its single chine hull made up from four separate stitch-and-glue panels.

The original 16-30 was a perfect choice for stitch-and-glue construction, with a single hard chine and a V-shaped bottom. The only difference from the original to the new version was that the plank keel was replaced by a filleted epoxy joint.

An interior shot of the original 16-30, showing the top of the plank keel. The bottom planks converge in a slightly rounded V-joint on the bottom of the hull.

The interior of the plywood 16-30, showing the filleted and taped seam on the interior bottom.

Our original 1893 canoe, however, has an arc bottom, much like a Star-class keelboat.

Body plan for Isalo from the original 1893 drawings.

You could likely make the plywood conform to this shape, but not in stitch and glue. In order to get the compound curve in the bottom panels, you’d have to introduce some interior framework, as on the 15 1/2′ sailing canoe Zephyr, and this would take us away from the idea of making both canoes as similar in construction as possible.

The arc-bottomed sailing canoe Zephyr, published in Yachting in 1925, was designed for traditional batten-seam plank-on-frame construction.

There are (at least) three possible ways to tackle the bottom of the new canoe, starting with the original lines. Here’s a sample section.

The original body plan at midships, with an arc bottom.

Option one is to take all of the arc out of the bottom and connect the chine and keel with a straight line, as on the 16-30:

Bottom section straight from chine to keel, with the dotted line showing the original arc section.

As you can see from the sketch, this takes a fair bit of volume out of the bottom. It might be ok, but I wouldn’t know until I did some hydrostatic calculations. Another option would be to introduce a second chine below the waterline.

The straight section from keel to chine has been broken into two parts by the addition of a second chine, with dotted line showing the original arc section.

This option preserves more of the original volume, but we’re now up to six hull panels, which will be more work to construct. Another way to do this is to give the canoe a narrow flat bottom panel:

Introducing a flat bottom panel equals or exceeds the original volume of the arc-bottom hull.

There are a few reasons why I like this option: it only needs 5 panels; it will make the boat easy to beach; and finally, the flat bottom will give a good solid anchorage for the centreboard trunk and mast steps without the complications of fitting them over a filleted centre seam. I built and sailed a little canoe with a hull like this for several years in the 1990s and it worked quite well. It was designed by John Bull, who used to own Solway Dory in the UK. He’s since retired, but the company continues, though I don’t believe they offer this design any more. The only drawback is that you need to install some floorboards so that you’re not sitting in any water that happens to come aboard!

Next step is to lay in the flat bottom on the original hull, re-draw the lines and do some calculations.

Until then. . .

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What Boat to Build Next?

Posted in Boat Building, Boating, Boating Books, Boats, Canoes, Sailing Canoes, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on December 22, 2011| 4 Comments »

Well, it’s December 22nd, 2011. The Fiddlehead is done, all my hand tools have been sharpened and tuned up again and I have a couple of weeks off work and some precious free time. What better way to end the year and look ahead to 2012 than to think about what boat I should build next?

Three possibilities have been going through my head for a while. Back in the mid 1990s when I worked at the old Marine Museum of Upper Canada with Peter the Boatbuilder (see last post), we taught a workshop course called “Introduction to Lapstrake Boatbuilding.” The boat we used as the example was Pete Culler’s 13′ lapstrake canoe, a design he called Butternut. This is a lovely little boat, weighing about 35 lbs. We liked it because it showed you everything you needed to know about traditional lapstrake boatbuilding in a nice small package that didn’t go through a whole lot of materials, and was also small enough that we could have two of them underway in the shop at the same time. We told the students it was “the original personal watercraft,” a boat you wear more than use. Here’s one of the completed Butternuts:

As usual with these projects, I didn’t end up with one for myself, so maybe now it’s time? Something this light would also fit on top of Wendy’s little Nissan, and be light enough for her to get up and down easily. Butternut is featured on pp. 23-25 of John Burke’s book Pete Culler’s Boats. The original book is out of print but WoodenBoat have reprinted a catalogue of Culler’s designs. A simple lines plan can be ordered from the Ships’ Plans Department at Mystic Seaport.

Another boat I’ve had in my head even longer than Butternut is the late Bob Baker’s lapstrake canoe Piccolo. He designed this for WoodenBoat back in the magazine’s early days, and a comprehensive how-to-build article appeared in issues no. 36 and 37. It’s an exquisite little sailing canoe, a boat of thoroughgoing charm and modest windward ability (but gentlemen don’t cruise to windward anyways, right?). I liked this boat as soon as I saw her and have always wanted one. Plans are available from The WoodenBoat Store. I’ve gotten as far as lofting Piccolo and starting to pile up some cedar to plank her with (sorry for the grainy photo, hard to take a picture of pencil lines on lofting!):

Two little lapstrake canoes, two worthwhile projects, and eventually I’ll probably build one of each. I’m still thinking about the 16-30 sliding seat canoe, though. One of the ideas I’ve been mulling over is turning the 16-30 into a how-to-build book that also includes some of the history of canoe sailing. I’ve made a couple of false starts on this, but they’ve always come up short. I think one of the things holding me back has been the fact that, much as I love the 16-30 and the sliding seat era of canoe sailing, it was a relatively late development, and isn’t really representative of the whole 1870-1900 era when recreational canoeing first flourished.

An idea came to me in the shower a while ago (often happens there, perhaps the water hitting my head shakes loose a thought?): what about developing another historic canoe design for construction in modern materials that could be a companion to the 16-30? The aims of that project (see the 16-30 page on this blog) were to capture the decked sliding seat canoe sailing experience in a boat that could be built by one person with average tools and skills, in a garage, in a winter, using readily-available parts and materials. Could I find an original design for a cruising sailing canoe that could be adapted the same way? If I did that, then the book could feature these boats as “bookends” exemplifying the range of canoe sailing types, with some history sandwiched in between, and complete plans and building instructions for both.

On to the search for a suitable design. One of the things that made the 16-30 work was that the original boat I was inspired by was a hard-chine hull. I don’t mind turning hard-chine cedar on oak into hard-chine stitch and glue plywood, but I’m not as interested in rendering a round-bottomed hull into a multi-chine stitch and glue boat. Then I came across a design while browsing through Forest & Stream, a treasure trove of canoeing, yachting and other 19th century sporting history. Called Isalo (which is a town in Madagascar, not sure of the connection to canoeing), the boat is a hard-chined hull with a removable sliding seat and two sliding gunter rigs: a cruising outfit of 60 + 18 square feet and a racing rig of 100 + 30 square feet.

This design looks as though it has some potential, so the first step is to do a feasibility study by scaling the design up, re-drawing the lines, generating offsets and thinking about how she might be built. I’ll let you know how it goes.

In the mean time, here’s an interesting development for those interested in the history of small craft. Isalo‘s lines were originally published in The Model Yachtsman and Canoeist, a British magazine which appeared from 1884-1894. It wasn’t what you’d call a mass-circulation piece, so original copies are very hard to find. The Albert Strange Association has just announced that the whole run of 2000 pages has been digitized and made available on two CDs in a searchable pdf format for the very reasonable price of 15 pounds sterling. You can order your copy from the Association’s web site. Perfect Christmas gift for the boating historian on your list.

Best wishes of the season to you all.

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The Canadian Canoe Company

Posted in Boating, Boating Books, Books about, Canoes, tagged , , , , on November 3, 2011| 1 Comment »

 The history of the canoe building companies that were a significant part of the economic life of Peterborough, Ontario, for more than one hundred years is as rich and tangled a story as you’re likely to find in Canadian business history. Invention, entrepreurship, patents, lawsuits, rivalries, mergers, acquisitions, bankruptcies and catastrophic fires: it’s a tale that has all this and more. It is also a complicated story, and those who are interested in canoeing history, Canadian history, Canadian business history and the story of how the city of Peterborough, Ontario came to be synonymous around the world with the canoe will have a much easier time figuring it out after they have read Peterborough author Ken Brown’s new book: The Canadian Canoe Company & the early Peterborough Canoe Factories.

This isn’t Brown’s first crack at the subject. In 2001, The Canadian Canoe Museum published published his book The Invention of the Board Canoe: the Peterborough stories from their sources, which compiled primary source material to explore competing claims for the origin of the Peterborough area’s unique wide-board method of canoe construction. This first book was a modest pamphlet, which did invaluable service in clarifying an important part of the local canoeing story. It wasn’t, however, a book that you would be likely to leave out on your coffee table, or give to anyone but the most hardened canoe-head as a Christmas or birthday present (don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a criticism. I’ve read and enjoyed and used it, and I’ll be forever grateful that he wrote it.) With the publication of this new volume, which has been more than fifteen years in the making, Brown has really raised the bar. Now we’re definitely in gift and coffee table territory, and several people I know will be getting one for Christmas.

Reading through this book and learning about the challenges that faced these entrepreurs as they developed their businesses, we are reminded that although the canoes they built are revered today for their craftsmanship, they were originally made in an un-romantic, hard-headed commercial environment. Brown has done an excellent job with the business history of this industry, not surprising considering that his working life was spent as a chartered accountant. This is an aspect of maritime history that is often neglected, and it is refreshing to see it treated in such detail. It also helps to bring the story out, for we see both the sucesses and the failures of these companies, both the good decisions and the bad.

The book is amply illustrated and visually sumptuous, and publisher Karen Taylor and graphic designer Louis Taylor have done a fine job bringing the story to life. The 16 pages of colour plates at the end are a real treat, as is the back inside cover, which identifies the sites of companies connected with Peterborough’s canoe industry from 1858-1961. This map is particularly valuable because few of these structures are still extant today and these industries which were such a prominent part of downtown Peterborough for so many years are now invisible.

Highly-recommended and just in time for Christmas, The Canadian Canoe Company & the early Peterborough Canoe Factories is available from Cover to Cover Publication Services and from The Canadian Canoe Museum, which also carries The Invention of the Board Canoe: The Peterborough stories from their sources.

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Building a Fiddlehead: Part 12

Posted in Boat Building, Boating, Canoes, Uncategorized, tagged , , on October 24, 2011| 5 Comments »

In this shot, the covering boards have been varnished on the underside and permanently screwed to the boat. Where they cover the watertight compartment of each end, they’ve also been bedded in sealant. I’ve also taken the outer stem off, buttered it with bedding compound, re-attached it using all of the screws and epoxied a tapered wooden plug ineach screw hole which will be trimmed flush later.

The inwales receive a coat of bedding compound on their backs before being screwed in place for good.

With all of the decking and outwales permanently fastened, it’s time to start building up the finish. The first coatis usually thinned at least 50% to penetrate deeply and raise the grain.

Even a thinned coat begins to bring out the nice warm look of the cherry.

The next step is the cockpit coamings. Because of the way Harry has designed the ends, they don’t have to fit together closely, but it still takes a couple of tries of clamping them in place dry to get the fit right.

It’s a good idea to use clamping pads on the inside of the coaming to avoid marking it with the c-clamps. It’s also a good idea to not press too hard on the portion of the coaming that extends above the deck, or you might split it and have to get out another one in a hurry (this last sentence was written by the voice of experience!).

With both sides trimmed and clamped in place, the coaming can be fastened. You’ll need to measure carefully from the bottom up to make sure the screws hit the carlin and not the deck.

At each end of the coaming, a triangular block of cherry fastens the two ends together.

The block is fastened in place from the outside with four screws through the coaming.

After the block is fastened, the top and bottom are faired into the coaming.

Now is a good time to stand back and look at the coaming. For this boat, I decided that it was a little too high in the middle, so I got out the plane and gave it some more sheer. Do this carefully, and don’t forget to sight from each end as well as each side as you’re working.

The coamings in place.

The designer has come up with an ingenious solution for finishing the coamings which avoids what can be a tricky raking beveled cut. It begins by sawing off the rough ends of the coaming and the triangular block.

This leaves a blunt surface at each end.

This is finished with another triangular block that sits on the deck cap.

This little block ties everything together nicely.

This is attached with a little thickened epoxy.

And left to dry overnight.

Then it’s back to sanding, fairing the coaming and blocks together into a pleasing whole with smooth transitions between the different pieces.

And then it’s back to varnishing, building up a good solid surface.

Because I was in a bit of a hurry, I used a quick-drying acrylic enamel on the exterior hull and the interior bottom.

The last step was to make some nice cherry floorboards that go in in two sections. And here we are, a finished Fiddlehead.

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Building a Fiddlehead: Part 11

Posted in Boat Building, Boating, Boats, Canoes, Uncategorized, tagged , , on October 23, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Here’s a shot from above showing how the beveled end of the outwale fits against the stem.

With the end of the outwale cut and beveled, the outwale is clamped amidships.

It’s important to make sure that it’s clamped so that this end fits tightly, and to make a centerline hash mark so you can find this position again, because now comes the tricky part: fitting the other end.

Before the bevel from the other end can be transferred to the stock,we need one other important mark. Bending the outwale in as far as it will go, transfer the intersection of the outer stem and sheer plank to the stock.

Now transfer the bevel using the mark just made as the origin point on the inboard side.

Check that midships hash mark again, then cut the other end of the outwale. I usually cut it at least 1/8” too big and then gradually fit it into place.

The screws that fasten the outwale on are highly visible, and it looks terrible if they’re not lined up evenly, so I clamped a block to the drill press along which the outwale slides, ensuring that the countersunk holes are in a straight line.

Here’s the finished outwale fastened in place.

Here’s a long shot. The outwale makes a dramatic improvement in the appearance of the boat because the shadows cast by it on the sheer plank really define that important curve.

Now you can see what a nice effect the deck cap gives: the lines of the outwale, deck edge and deck cap edge all converge on our nicely-finished stemhead.

Once both outwales are fitted, the combination of curves that make up this little canoe is visible. This is a stage where taking your time really matters, because these are the details people will notice on the finished boat. It took me a whole day, for instance, just to get out and fit the outwales.

Now that everything has been dry fitted, it’s time to take off the decking to varnish the underside side before final assembly.

Until next time. . .

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Building a Fiddlehead: Part 10

Posted in Boat Building, Boating, Uncategorized, tagged , , on October 22, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Until now, the hood ends of the planks at the stems have only been roughly trimmed, mainly to get them out of each other’s way when the planking was going on. They need to be dressed down to a smooth curve and square across the end of the boat. This latter part is tricky, as it’s very easy to trim them at an angle and take off too much on one side. The block plane, the spokeshave and even a belt sander all have their place in this step, though it’s very easy to overdo it with the latter tool. It’s best to work slowly and take only a stroke or two before checking with the template again.

One way to test the accuracy of the curve you’re shaping, and especially whether it’s square across the boat, is to use the inside of the outer stem, which has been cut from cherry stock using the inner stem pattern from the plans as a template. At this point, the outer stem is still rough stock, though the inside edge has been faired.

Once the curve was dressed down to a fair shape that also fits the inboard face of the outer stem, I made a template for next time which was checked against both the inboard face of the inner stem and the outboard face of the planks on the boat.

After the fastening holes are marked on the outer stem and carefully checked to see that they won’t conflict with any of the hood end fastenings already on the boat (something which becomes increasingly complicated as the building process goes on and you add more fasteners) they are drilled and countersunk on the drill press to make sure they’re square. While holding the stem on the boat, I also made marks to remind myself at the drill press what angle the holes should be drilled at.

Often, the planking will be a little thicker in way of the gains, so now is a good time to check the width and dress it down if necessary.

The width at the forefoot has been picked up with an adjustable caliper, and when that is brought down to the sheer, it’s apparent that some wood has to come off this pair of laps. When you dress this down, you’ll also find out if you’ve countersunk the hood end screws far enough(!).

The outer stems are fastened on, but only with the topmost and bottom screws, as they will be removed and put back a few more times as everything is fitted together.

With the boat right side up, the shaping of the stem can begin. Here I’m marking the intersection of the top of the deck cap and the back of the stem curve as a reminder for when the stem top is being shaped.

The final width of the outer face of the stem is marked to shape the tapered cutwater. As you can see from the edge of the line I’m drawing, it’s just slightly wider than the countersink holes, which will be filled with glued plugs a little later. This is why it’s important to get those screw holes in a straight line.

The stemhead was roughly cut on the bandsaw. Now we need a nice radius for the top, and the handle of a foamie looks to be just the right radius to continue the curve I’ve already cut.

The radius marked for final dressing, along with a line that continues the sheer.

The final shape of the stemhead has been made on a belt/disk sander. This is a powerful tool with which it’s easy to take off too much wood. In this case, you can see that I’ve not completely followed my own line, and so the bottom of the convex part droops down instead of following the sheer—oh well, that’s the kind of detail that gets better with practice.

The next step is to fair the covering boards to the sheer planks. I’ve made three flat sanding blocks by tacking cut-up sanding belts onto pieces of oak. This is one area where you must back up the sandpaper with a hard block, as you’re aiming to fair everything together with a smooth curve based on the plan view of the sheer plank.

Because the cherry is harder that the cedar, I’m pressing a little harder on the upper edge of the block and using long, sweeping, overlapping strokes as I move down the boat. You could use a plane, but caution is required as the ringnails that fasten the sheer plank to the sheer clamp are not far below the edge of the sheer, and they’ll take a big nick out of your nice sharp plane blade if you hit one.

As always, it’s important to periodically stop and sight along the work to make sure it’s fair. In this case, running your hand along it can often tell you as much by feel as by eye.

With the sheerline faired, we have a nice even surface on which to mount the outwales, as I would call them, or the “guards,” as the designer prefers. When I made the cutwater on the outside stem, I left a square portion just below the sheerline. This provided a place to drill a hole for the painter, and it will also let me land the ends of the outwales and make a nice clean finish that ties the outer stem and planking together. The first step is to get a small bevel gauge.

This is fitted right into the intersection of the outer stem and sheer plank to pick up the angle.

That bevel is then transferred to the end of the outwale stock.

Here’s where the outwale will be fitted, and you can see what a nice job it will do of marrying everything together (and covering over the gap where I inadvertently trimmed the upper edge of the sheer plank a little too much—that’s what trim does!)

I’ve made a little mockup piece of outwale to test the angle on the end. It’s a nice touch to put a little upward taper in the end of a piece like this to lighten it up visually. In this case, that’s also a good idea because when I was drilling the painter hole I wasn’t really thinking of the outwale, and so if I don’t taper the end upward, it will awkwardly clip the top of the hole.

Until next time. . .

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Building a Fiddlehead: Part 9

Posted in Boat Building, Boating, Boats, Canoes, Uncategorized, tagged , , on October 22, 2011| Leave a Comment »

The rough-cut covering board is clamped in place to check for fit, and the inside edge of the carlin is traced on the bottom.

Back on the bench, the inside edge is planed to the traced line. By skewing the block plane, it can cut the inside curve, even though the sole is longer than the radius of the curve.

On the boat, the centreline ends of the covering boards are carefully trimmed to make a tight joint.

The covering boards dry-fitted. The outer edges are still rough, and won’t be completely trimmed until they’re fastened for good.

With the forward ends fitted and clamped, the midships butt joint is carefully marked and trimmed square.

The first pair of covering boards fitted and fastened.

With the covering boards fastened, the coaming support knees can be fastened in place.

Just for fun, we brought the museum’s c. 1905 Rushton double-paddle out for comparison with the Fiddlehead. With the exception of a little bit of epoxy and the fact that the Rushton boat is round-bottomed and has steam-bent ribs, there’s not much difference at all between the two.

When the second pair of covering boards is fitted, the midships butt joint is finished before the final trimming takes place elsewhere to ensure a tight fit.

The final covering board clamped in place for trimming.

I usually centrepunch fastening holes with an awl to ensure that the bit doesn’t skate sideways when the hole is being started.

With the covering boards fastened, the tops of the coaming support knees can be dressed down flush—because of the angle at which they meet the carlins coming down from the bulkhead, there will be a little bit to take off.

The final step before the second layer of decking is to add three trim strips to bring the top of the bulkhead and carlin up flush with the surface of the covering boards. These have been taped in place for now and will be glued later.

All of the main decking and framing dry-fitted, ready for the next level.

You may have noticed in earlier post that when we were making patterns for the covering board and decking that the decking stopped short of the bow. After thinking about it some more, we decided to go with a more Peterborough-style deck. So, I made a new pattern for the deck so that it and the covering boards converged at the stem. The final step will be to cover the long centre deck seam that runs from the forward end of the coaming to the stem with a long narrow deck cap. There are several advantages to this style, not the least of which is that the long seam between the deck halves doesn’t have to be tight. If you put your hand under the deck of an old Peterborough canoe, chances are you will feel a gap between the two halves of the deck planking.

The two halves of the deck meet at a slight angle owing to the crown of the deck. In order for the deck cap to lie flush, this crown must be taken off the centerline with a plane and sandpaper.

The deck cap is just a long, straight-grained cap which tapers from just under 2” wide at its inboard end to just a bit wider than the inboard face of the outer stem at the outboard end—the final trimming will be done once the outer stem is in place.

One end of the deck dry-fitted, showing how the three levels work together.

An inboard view.

Ready for the coamings.

The pleasing shape of the deck and cockpit are beginning to emerge.

Until next time. . .

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Building a Fiddlehead: Part 7

Posted in Boat Building, Boating, Boats, Uncategorized, tagged , , on September 3, 2011| 1 Comment »

The middle plank is beveled and ready for the sheer plank.

The sheer plank dry-fitted in place.

It’s important to keep sighting the lower edge of the plank to make sure the curve is sweet and fair, as these are highly visible on the finished boat.

The sheer strake fitted and clench-nailed.

The sheer plank is epoxied to the oak sheer strake, and it is also fastened with bronze ringnails. First, a 1/16” pilot hole is drilled for each nail.

Then they are nailed in, backed up with the clenching dolly.

All planked, taking a moment to admire the finished job. The little “porcupine” quills sticking out of the planking near the bottom are small dowels being glued in the holes where the drywall screws held the garboard on during the clench nailing.

The sheer plank is planed down to the level of the oak sheer clamps.

Out the window, onto the truck and down to the Canadian Canoe Museum for finishing.

Until next time. . .

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Building a Fiddlehead: Part 3

Posted in Boat Building, Boating, Boats, Canoes, tagged , , on August 11, 2011| Leave a Comment »

With the bottom shaped, it’s time to get everything we’ve built so far set up on the strongback.

The plans show a baseline above the midships frame and the bulkheads that represents the top of the strongback. Using this, temporary legs are cut from scrap and fastened with drywall screws. The frame and bulkheads are plumbed and aligned on the strongback and the legs are fastened to cross-cleats.

The stems are fastened to the bottom with screws and glue.

The bottom/stem assembly is placed on the frame and bulkheads and carefully aligned. The bottom is then glued and screwed to the frames and bulkheads.

The stemheads are extra long, extending beyond the sheerline. When the boat is turned upright, these will each be trimmed and shaped into a pleasing curve. In the mean time, the height of the stem and the height of the legs on the frame and bulkheads affects the curvature, or rocker, of the bottom. When the bottom is fastened to the frames and bulkheads and the stems are pulled down tight to the strongback, it introduces a (very slight, for this particular boat has almost no rocker) curvature.

At the moment, the edges of the bottom are square, just as they came from the bandsaw. The bulkheads and the frame, however, are angled so the planks must meet the bottom at an angle and the bottom must therefore be bevelled. How do you find the correct angle? By playing “connect the dots,” or rather “connect the bevels.” Where a bulkhead meets the bottom, you can lay a straight piece of scrap along it and see how much wood must be planed off to make the scrap lie flat.

If you do this at each intersection, and also where the stems meet the bottom, you will have four known points on each side to guide you. The bevel “rolls,” or changes between each of these, so your job is to join these areas up with a fair curve to create this rolling bevel.

Here are four of the most useful tools for doing this kind of work, and in fact four of the most useful tools in a shop that builds traditional small boats. From left to right, they are: a jack plane; a low-angle block plane; a bullnose rabbet plane and a low-angle spokeshave. In the backgound is an awl, useful for clearing chips and shavings from the throats of the tools.

The next pieces to be added are the sheer clamps, which define the upper edge of the hull. These are important elements that join the sheer plank, decks and stems together, so they’ll be gotten out of white oak. I couldn’t find any stock long enough, so I ripped a shorter piece of white oak and scarphed it together with epoxy, using an 8:1 angle.

Ripping this long, flexible piece takes careful preparation, so I’ve made some temporary supports to hold before and after it passes over the saw. As usual, the preparation takes about 5 times longer than it does to make the actual cut. Once the sheer clamps are ripped, they are planed to the final dimensions.

The clamps fit into pre-cut notches in the bulkheads and frames. At each stem, they must be cut so that the planking will flow smoothly off them and on to the stem bevel. This is pretty easy at one end, using a bevel gauge to lift the correct angle and cut the end of the clamp. At the other end, though, the untrimmed end will be in the way of an exact measurement, so it requires some careful thought to cut the correct angle at the correct length.

With the bevels cut in each end, the sheer clamps are screwed to the frame, bulkheads and stems.

Everything is now in place for planking, where we’ll pick up next time.

Until then. . .

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Building a Fiddlehead: Part 1

Posted in Boat Building, Boating, Boats, Canoes on August 6, 2011| Leave a Comment »

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. . .

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