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Thread: canoe

  1. #16
    Ash is definitely the wood of choice for gunwales. It is hard enough to take a beating, relatively rot resistant, inexpensive, glues up well if you are scarfing two pieces together and takes a nice finish. Most importantly, it will match the seats if you purchase them commercially made as most of them are made of Ash.

    For a job like that I would consider using dowel pegs for a through and through of the inner and outer gunwales as the hull is likely made of polyester resin which is horrible to glue to. A through dowel epoxied every 12" or so will work well and be attractive.
    Jackbat

  2. #17
    Composite would mean something like wood encased in glass. The plastic wood decking is heavy, and not stiff.

    Actually, I wouldn't waste time on that boat, it looks like a poor design. I have more than the usual reservations about such projects having been in on the recovery of two bodies from a canoe like that. What is "like" that. Low freeboard, flat bottom at mid section, molded in keel, glassed in floatation, seems to have been shot with a chopper gun. There are some pretty good boats that outwardly look like that, so one can't be sure over the net. Oh, I noticed another one, a stiffener on the inside, that along with the keel are an indication the layup is not stiff enough without these kludges, so again, shot glass. Now if it has a name, or it was made of Kevlar or something, it might be OK. Otherwise, you would be throwing money and time at junk. Is there any reason to believe he was knowledgeable and skilled at canoeing? Did he disappeat into the wilds for weeks, run river, own several other boats, etc... How heavy, how long.

    I was watching this messy people show. The lady who came along to get the guy all cleaned up, wanted to know why he was holding on to an ancient vacuum cleaner. Apparently it reminded him of his mother (yikes). She asked how would he feel if they framed a picture of it. I now do this with the kids. "So you want to hold onto that dead snake... Click!". At your stage in life, I am sure you don't need any such advice, but maybe a pic would do, or could you salvage the deck as a corner table, Or cut a piece of glass out with the company badge riveted on it, and put a pic of your friend over it in a frame from one of the seats. If it is a memorial you want, maybe you can zero in on something more manageable, and that won't end up getting you, or the next person, killed.

  3. #18
    Roderick,

    You could be absolutely correct about the design, however if I could add just a couple of clarifications, a composite boat is defined as the combination of 2 or more materials to create characteristics which cannot be found in just one material. So any boat made of fiberglass is a composite boat. Most people think FRP stands for fiberglass reinforced plywood. Not sure what started that misconception, but it actually stands for Fiber reinforced plastic or Polymer, which in most cases means epoxy or polyester resin. So by its very definition, any fiberglass boat with or without core is composite construction.

    I have laid up a number of composite canoes and kayaks as well as built my share of wooden boats (30 in the last 4 years) and virtually any composite canoe worth its salt will have some type of stiffening built into the hull. Particularly a laker with wider, flatter bottoms. When designers build keels into molds for composite boats it is primarily for longitudinal stiffening of the hull. In some cases a hull design requires a keel to paddle straight, but more often than not they do not.

    Core materials have changed much in the last 30 years and that is due mostly to the manufacturers wanting to save money or weight on hull construction. 30 years ago we would have 50 oz's of glass on a kayaks hull just to make it thick enough to support without too much flex. Today, boats are being built with half that weight using high tech core materials which simply did not exist in the 1970's and 80's. Back then Balsa wood was the go to with a good thick mat and a couple of layers of finish glass on each side of it.

    Putting a core material which goes from gunwale to gunwale is akin to putting ribs in a boat with thin wooden slats for a hull material. Think about the original adirondack guide boats. They have very thin, in some cases 1/8" planking but they are reinforced with ribs every 6 inches or so which gives the planking the strength it needs. You certainly wouldn't want a 1/8" thick cedar hull without them.

    A lot of the advancements in core technology allow us to make high performance canoes and kayaks made of Epoxy instead of Polyester resin and using cloths like Kevlar and Carbon fiber instead of standard s-glass or e-glass. You can find a lot of info on different core materials at Fiberglasssupply.com

    I have a twelve foot pack canoe that I laid up a couple of years ago in fiberglass, epoxy and core mat which weighs in at a whopping 12 lbs fully decked out. This boat was pulled from a mold give to me by the late great Bart Hauthaway, an early pioneer in composite small boats and someone who I miss and wished I had more time with.

    So just a different perspective, hope I didn't offend.
    Jackbat

  4. #19
    It's OK, I've been building canoe since 79. We are all in a sense working for the OP, and anyone else whose interest might be peaked, so I value all opinions.

    Semantics aside, I don't personally want a flat bottomed canoe lake boat, with an external keel and molded in stiffeners of the type shown. That boat is a bit of a puzzle, because a fair amount of care was taken with the hefty wooden bit, but the hull looks like the kind of thing that was sold up and down local HWYs here for about 250 back in the 80s. Those boats are not safe, in the sense that they were built for very undemanding uses and don't give back much to the paddler. Of course in canoes the paddler is responsible for his own safety, and it is all good as long as you can swim out of any trouble you get into. Cores and fancy fabrics, etc... are what I mean by composute, one could say engineered laminates. Of course throwing in a piece of hose and shooting it with a chopper gun is also composite boat building, using a core, etc... I just wouldn't waste any time restoring it. If there are any raw edges, wounds or textures on the inside that would indicate chopped glass, I wouldn't waste my time. I do know one company up here that used to produce boats with a lot of the signatures of the gas station specials, and they were pretty good boats, so one can't be sure just because it ticks a few boxes.

  5. #20
    Well at the risk of offending literally thousands of our customers, I agree with you in as much as I am not a big fan of the flat bottom lakers, and I always tell my customers that if you have a wooden canoe that needs a keel, then either it is not a very good design or you need to work on your paddling techniques. As you can imagine, I get to paddle a greater variety of canoe designs than the average person does and in all fairness, each design has its goods and bads. Having a flat bottom laker up here in the north to be able to stand up and flycast out of is not very different than having a Pirogue in Louisiana.

    That said, I did a design a few years back at the constant request stream from our customers to make a wide, flat bottom canoe which would take the dog, wife, kids and cooler on a saturday afternoon. From the time we started to offer that design it has become our best seller (by far). Frankly, when a customer calls and tells me he wants to be able to take his randy 100 lb lab for canoe rides, the first boat I point them to is the big flat bottom canoe. It may not paddle as fast and straight as some of our other designs, but it has a much better chance of keeping them dry when the dog jumps out of the boat to chase the geese.

    Have a good night.
    Jackbat

  6. #21
    I don't object to flat bottom boats at all. In the canoe world it can be symptomatic of problems in boats that often look like the one up thread.

    All the rage at the moment are the stand up paddleboards. Many of those designed for fishing are flat. It depends on the objectives of the design. There is a big difference between designing a flats SUP, for one hopes, semi-competent people, and the stuff they churned out for cottagers in the 70s.



    Are photos like this allowed?

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