Yoke and Spars installed

Well the yoke and spars were installed, but I wish the grain of the wood was running the other way, I think they would be even stronger if it was.  But they look fine, later if they need to be replaced that is easy enough to do.  Also have the two seats caned and a final coat of varish on them, now they need to be installed and a finish coat of varnish on the gunnels and we should be good to go once a little hardwar for a couple of lines is installed.  Soon we will see if it floats.

Seat Making

finished product...front seat

I thought I had sent away for synetic cane, but ended up buying the real thing.  So I quickly roughed up the varnish again and was not careful enough when drilling the holes and had the exit points made a little unsightly, they are on the bottom and will not be visible.  So when Gil Gilpatrick said the seat weaving was time consuming he was not kidding.  Although the end product was acceptable for the first time weaving we will see how they stnad up or rather, sit up to time.

Bottom Knots

Me sanding the seat frames on a sunny day

Varnishing the outside

Varnishing the inside

Gunnels Installed and Sanded

The decks have been installed and sanded off, below you will see the before and after photos.  Then you will see that the canoe is starting to look like a canoe.  Lately I have been working on the seats, and now after running out of juniper (larch) I am using some Birch that Tony gave me, may redo the yoke and spars in Birch too if I have enough.  Getting closer each week, but still lots to do.

Gunnels and stem decks

Well, I ripped the gunnels 1 by 3/4  and made a miter box to cut a 7 inch long splice cut.  Then I spliced them together, I did this after making a full set of Gunnels but I did not like how they were cut and spliced so i redid them.  The others turned out better, but I had some issues with knots in the juniper (larch), which I hope the epoxy glue will take care of.

Working by myself I came up i\with an idea of how to hold the inside gunnel with hand clamps and then slowly hold up the outside gunnel and using clamps I slowly clamped them in place, removing hand clamps as i went along.  Using the pre-drilled holes in the inner stems I screwed the two gunnels together, making first an extra pilot hole through the hull and outer gunnel from the pre-drilled holes that I just mentioned in the inner gunnel.  This was continued until I reached the stem, slowly moving clamps after an area was screwed on and re positioning them further along the canoe towards the gunnel.

Here are the stems, I had an 18 inch piece of juniper and I cross cut it diagonally, them flipped it and using a simple holding jig on the table I managed to resin glue a 1 1/2 inch piece of maple between it.  I then trimmed the maple to a point and trimmed off the bottom end.   Then the gunnels were marked on the stem form and were cut out using a hand saw,   Eventually they were glued and screwed in place.  Recently I began the sanding to clean them up.  At the very bottom you can see a photo of the frames I have started for the seats, so far I only have the tendons cut, next the mortise.