Another five days of non-building time! :eek:

There's been a little progress, but it's time for a gatuitous bump for the thread, so here's some photos of yesterday's fiddle, and a bit of a seat fitting tutorial.

The photo above, with all the clamps actually shows the inwhale spacers in the process of being glued on, the instructions say do it on the inwhale, but it doesn't matter, and I find it easier to set the whole thing up this way.

The instructions on most plans say "fit seats", and while Mik's are somewhat more detailed than that, it's not all that hard if you've done it before, but if you haven't here's my way:

Photo 1)
Build a cardboard form, just a box without a top or bottom, and sides are at maximum the height you want the seat to be. Don't worry about the fall in the floor, we'll fix that in a minute.

This box will be levelled, and will serve as a prop or support to hold the seat in while gluing, after the glue is set, it can be just crushed and pulled out.

Photo 2)
Measuring the width of the seat is now easy! Make a "joggle stick" out of two bits of scrap, each with a sharp end, and two cheap spring clamps (these came from a Christmas Cracker last week!).

Align the sticks across the box, spread them till they touch the sides, clamp them together, and go away and take your width measurement.

Photo 3)
(really comes before 2) but not to worry! String a line (the yellow thing at the top of the shot) from the peak of the bow and stern. Since this is a symmetrical canoe, it will be automatically parallel with the waterline, in another boat, fiddle so it is.

Now with the seat form in place, measure down perpendicluar to the line to find the slope in the floor.

In the case of this boat, the aft seat sits over a piece of floor that slopes about 6mm, so I trimmed the form so the seat will be level (in a for and aft direction). The forward seat floor is so close to level at that point it doesn't matter.

Some would say it doesn't matter anyway, but it's nice to have the seats in the same (or parallel at least) plane.

Photo 4)

Seat template in place. Measured from the stick, marked and cut right first time!!

The black lines are checking a small modification I will make to the seats. I'm thinking of routing decorative slots to give a bit of "boaty" feel, and of course to save another few grams.

Photo 5)
Inwhale spacers glued in, inwhale clamped temporarily in place. I've got to go and glue it now: See you later!


Cheers,

P

Attached Thumbnails

         

__________________

Howdy Midge,

The plans might just say "fit seats" but they do have some pics too!!!

However you have done a much better job of explaining than I have ...
er ...
um ...
would it be OK if I steal your info and put it in the plans (with appropriate accreditation of course!!!)?

Boatmik

__________________
Storer Wooden Boat Plans subforum on UBeaut Woodwork Forums
Boat Plans
Cheap Boat Plan

Mik,
Err, sorry, I didn't mean to be disparaging, you are correct!... I was really speaking generically (I is still a bit tired, and blurry eyed - glad I don't drink!)

Please use as you wish!

Cheers,

P

__________________

Hi. I am also in the thros of building a (an) Eureka.

The truth is, I suppose, that I finished the structure this afternoon and tomorrow I want to finish the coating.

The rush is that I want to take it away on Friday.

I have taken a lot of WIP photos and I have changed just a few things that I couldn't get to work for me.

The finished boat looks very nice and I am quite pleased with the result.

I was very out of practice as I have not built anything significant from wood for 20 years and the last boat I built was a Mirror dinghy in 1965.

When I return from my vacation I will post some selected photos and I will also try to justify my changes from Michael's plan.

I will let the forum know of my impressions of the canoe in the water.\

Cheers

deepdug!

How dare you!! This thread has been going for years and I've still got weeks to go, and you just up and finish???

Please don't forget the pics! We're all looking forward to them.

What did you do for paddles??

Cheers,

P

Looking forward to seeing the photos and hearing about the changes.

Many of the most useful things I have learned over the years have been from people in boatbuilding classes or who have built my boats.

Free paddle plans including detailed building instructions are on the webpage link below. Also some 9ft oars for boats with a beam of 4ft6ins through to 5ft (download the additional oar drawing and use the paddle instructions)

Best Regards
Michael Storer

__________________
Storer Wooden Boat Plans subforum on UBeaut Woodwork Forums
Boat Plans
Cheap Boat Plan

For now I am using $10 a pop paddles from Glasscraft until I make two single paddles using Michael's free plan.

I am back from Stansbury on the Yorke Peninsular and I have completed the first sea trials of my Eureka.

Due to an inexperienced crew the first thing that happened was that we got tipped out. I was trying to test how much I could lean the boat and she leant the same way and over we went.

I found the plans a little vague on the placement of the seats and the result is that the tops of my seats are 180mm above the floor. As I weight 90ks this is too high and made the canoe feel a bit unstable. If I sit on the floor it feels fine but it is a reach to paddle from down there. I will take the seats out and experiment with various heights before I try again. I have seen some really cool looking cane insert seats on American and Canadian web sites and I may investigate those.

I took the boat away without the varnish and applied it in the caravan park over there. The boat seems to have ended up a bit skinnier that was designed but it looks very sleek and lovely so I am reluctant to try to fatten it up for fear of breaking something or spoiling the lines. Let's hope I can reach a good feel with lowered seats.

I have no photos of the boat in the water but it seemed to float with the chine just at the water line at my seat. That is with about 145 kilos of crew on board.

Attached Thumbnails

     

Deepdug,
Glas to hear the canoe went well. Do you have any pic's at all of the finished canoe??

__________________
Have a nice day - Cheers

Deepdug,

It looks terrific!

Yours is certainly noticably narrower than mine. I have kept the 19 x19 temporary gunwhale clamped on during the whole process, and will put a temporary centre spreader in place before gluing on the inwhale just to make sure it stays close to it's designed beam dimension. (I don't like swimming!)

Comparing seat heights, I reckon yours are 60 or 80 (maybe 75) mm higher than where I propose to stick mine. You can see from the mockup above, that I've set them up 100 above the floor, which takes them to just under the chine. I hope that's low enough!

I thought about cane seats, but at the rate I work, figured that would take till the end of the millenium, so I'm going to rout a few slots in the seat, stand well back and squint at them and call it "art".

Tomorrow's a holiday I understand... maybe I'll get the inwhales on!

Watch this space! (and I'll add to Rowan's request for pics of it in the water please!)

P

One of my problems was that I could not find any mention of the designed width at the centre spreader and I didn't trust that little drawing to be to scale.

Also the plans say put the seat support with the bottom on the chine. That's what got the seats so high! As I was short of time I built the seats in situ which is a bugger now that I have to take them out. I hope the trusty Dremel will let me do some fine dental work there. If anyone has some better idea of how to lower the seats [perhaps by cutting near the side and attaching to the stump left behind] I would be pleased to hear it.

I also gave up trying to distort the piece of 15 X 15 that was supposed to be at the top of the bulkheads and left it out. I compensated [in my mind] by puting a filet across under the deck. My first test row at least proved that the flotation chambers are watertight!

I think that getting the dome in the decks was the hardest part of the whole exercise. I wonder if it is worth the effort. I had real trouble getting clamps to hold it.

I extended the gunwales to a point both fore and aft and the sanded them to a nice radius. I think that it looks better like that.

I went outside any took a few shots of it in my backyard but the bloody things came out at over 100k even on my camera's lowest setting so I will have to find out how to shrink them before I can post them. I have none of it in the water as yet.

Doug

Have you got Microsoft photo editor on your machine. If so just resize in there to about 600 pixels and save, usually brings the size down.

Not trusting drawings is a good thing! Michael's are absolutely spot-on, but at that scale a humid day can make 50mm of difference!

I suspect he'll read this and add a dimension from here on!

Using the 4mm ply was one of the reasons I was so aware of keeping the gunwhale line fair, so I was a bit careful.
I didn't read the plans past the bit that said the seat is (100-120 mm above the bottom) , but they also look right about there.

I don't think there's an easy way of cutting the seats out, although dropping them by 80mm or so will give you a bit to play with. I'd use an angle grinder, being careful not to grind the sides of the hull!
That's where experience helps! I just whacked on a flat bit, and cut it down to match the profile. It's all out of sight inside the compartment anyway.

It was worth the effort! I have got a bit of 6mm for the decks, and I reckon it's just about impossible to bend over that radius, so I intend to run it through the drum sander till it's about 4.5mm or until it bends easily!

The answer for others would be to use a lighter ply 4 or 5mm for the half sheet for decks, bulkhead and seats, or run a heap of shallow saw kerfs through the underside of the deck. The curve really makes it look like you put some effort in!
Yep, nice job. I guess I'll make up my mind when/if the time comes. As usual I have spent a lot of time thinking of really hard ways to do something really simple! (see my deck beam for an example of that!)
If you can't work it out, send me a PM and we'll overcome it!

cheers,

P

Thanks for the photo editor help.

I have made my living programming computers for over 40 years and I am completely up-to-date on some programming techniques but I cannot keep up with all of these tricks.

By the way I couldn't get the chooks to stay away. They are Wyandotte bantams so the boat looks much bigger when compared to my little chooks.

Attached Thumbnails

         

3 more

Attached Thumbnails