Remodeling the canoe for the upcoming season - Part 5

Jay is back at it with another report from the shop. He has sanded down all of the thwarts and the seat and will let these cure for another week to start varnish. He also did some final shaping of the inwales and prepped them for installation.  He made sure the fit was perfect at bow and stern.

Blue tape was applied to the original screw holes to prevent the thickend epoxy from oozing out on to the hull.

More paper and more tape:

Grabbing every clamp at the shop a total of 71 used per side! The amount was too much and he had to use a 25lb weight to keep the canoe from tipping over.

It all held after he let them set overnight. I never doubted it for a moment!

The process was repeated for the outwales.  Not before making sure the tapered fit was perfect before installation at both bow and stern.

The same process of clamping and fitting for the outwales that was done for the inwales was repeated per side:

He started to varnish the seats and thwarts, the warmth of the golden color is going to look beautiful!

The outwales are attached and now the process of placing the decks and drilling the holes for the seat and thwarts begins.

Jay attaches the deck with  hot glue to hold the piece in place. He will then be able to drill over the counterbore. He told me that the hot glue formula he uses has good bonding strength but low shear strength. When he is finally ready to fit the deck, he removes the screws and taps the deck with a mallet it will pop right out. He will then clean off the glue and epoxy and screw it as a finished
piece.

All the seats, thwarts are now drilled after he measured and measured and measured. He only had one chance to drill and it had to be in the right spot. He has more patience than me!

Today he was working on the seat webbing and trying to get the right location before stapling it to the seat.

Stay tuned for next weeks report :-)

Remodeling the canoe for the upcoming season - Part 4

Another busy weekend getting the rails ready for installation. The new gunwales are a little thinner than the original 5/8" vs  3/4". Jay will add an 18" piece of ash at paddling station to be fed up around the seat drop.

Get out the round over bit, router table and feather boards, time to add some shape to the rails:

Preliminary shape of outwales. They will be rounder after the rail is attached to hull:

Here is the rough shape of the inwales:

Using a Dunmore hand grinder, Jay quickly drilled hundreds of shallow holes on the mating face of the gunwales to help the expoxy bite to the hull.

We have ordered the brass screws that will go under the bungs his dad is making. Here is a picture of what the bungs look like in Jay's canoe:

The thwarts, seat drop and carry handles will have carriage bolts made of silicone bronze. These are now ordered as well.

Remodeling the canoe for the upcoming season - Part 3

We decide to have the outwale and inwale sandwich the hull. Jay will scarf and then plane the rails again as in one piece. He will use a router to round the edges prior to installation.

Scarfs are planed to size, this is the outwale:

Dry fitting the deck:

Now starts the process of sanding and epoxy work:

The staple holes in the seats have been filled with thickened epoxy. It won't show once covered with webbing:

Remodeling the canoe for the upcoming season - Part 2

Jay has taken apart all the wood trim and has photographed and measured for accurate seat, handle and thwart locations. The gunwales and decks are not worth saving but he will reuse the handles and thwarts. Unfortunately the seat needs a lot more work and may not be worth saving. At the very least it will need new webbing.

The parts saved have now been bleached and Jay discovers that the decks can also be reused. He thought they would break when he took the gunwales off but ended up using a heat gun to soften the glue and they just popped off.  He will be making new seat drops from the left over ash he is buying to make the gunwales.


Parts cleaned up nicely and zero rot:

Saving the seat will require a bit of work but he get's all the old webbing off and staples. It will also be bleached, sanded and epoxied. New webbing will be ordered.