Eureka Canoe

[m2c1Iw]

Yep fantastic

[BobWes]

Fantastic story! And you (you, son & daughter) have a great canoe!

Congratulations.

[b.o.a.t.]

1.
Eight days from ordering to afloat must be a new world record for Eureka.
Congratulations !!

2.
What you've built is an honest boat to be USED and which looks great.
Leave the show ponies for old people without kids. Otherwise you spend your
time worrying about scratches instead of having FUN.

3.
Eureka will out-perform almost anything else you encounter. On top of which,
99.999% of the population will see the wood grain & say "Wow", totally ignorant
of materials. The other 0.001% will recognise her as 2. above, and approve of
the utility & practicality.

Well done on building your family. Funny how it can be done better in plywood
than psycho-babble...

regards

[Canoath]

Thanks fellas

Wise words b o a t and so true. We had planned to paint deck and hull beforehand but even this wood grain with its flaws has me going wow, so we're leaving it. Only problem with the canoe now is the same thing that afflicts many I suppose. Getting out there and enjoying it. All that rushing and only been in the water twice. A combination of work and silly season commitments has left me to admire its shape sitting on sawhorses. But in the water we found that it was quite easy to manuvre and motored along nicely when we put an extra oomph in each stroke and I was surprised how straight it tracked when coasting.

It was good to have the kids pitch in Bob, particularly at the end there. We all got hooked on using the plane. I haven't used one since high school in the late 80s and the kids soon got the knack of it. My son doing the gunwales and daughter trimming the decks flush with the outside of the gunwales and they did a remarkably good job, avoiding taking too much off. I did miss not having a small block plane and spokeshave, so they're on the xmas list.

Just looking forward now to spending a lazy day out on the lake again.

[Flatdog]

I recieved a really great Christmas present from my wife in the form of the Eureka canoe plans. She downloaded them through Seawing Boats in the UK with no problems.

So Biting Midge, how long does it take to build a Eureka ?

[Boatmik]

It is a great story. A few years back there was someone who built one very fast, but not quite as quick as this.

Builders are always making it harder and harder for me to answer the question I always get asked ... "how long does it take to build"

Congratulations! A brilliant effort!

Michael

[Canoath]

Thanks very much Michael. Although I enjoyed building from scratch, a kit would easily have saved more than a day, plus one gets the proper ply supplied too. I read on duckflat's site that kits are proposed and I hope that goes ahead.

Our Eureka's had a good workout over the xmas/new year period. One major change is we painted the hull white and it does look pretty smart. We just used British Paints undercoat 3x and the corresponding four seasons exterior white (because it had a light house on the tin) I figured it should do for a boat and it's holding up great plus easier to touch up where I've scraped a couple of rocks.

Yesterday the eureka hauled it's first fish too. We ventured into Gogelderie Weir to test a basic, temporarily attached, fish finder, in search of cod and yella' belly but only got a small carp. We spent 6hrs in the Eureka from 10 till 4pm and had a great day. No probs wth manuvering round obstacles, crossing varying flow rates and traversing some turbulent spots. Pretty stable and surefooted. Perhaps not the right term but it went where I wanted it to go.

A couple of shots showing the white hull and the carp

[Flatdog]

I have been looking around the internet at different canoe builds to see how they are built and also to get ideas as to how I can put my own personal touch to our Eureka build . I came across this really nice strip/ply canoe (SF Peterborough 15 Build) What I really like is the way the inwales/spacers are routed out of one piece. I think it gives a really nice clean finish. Is there any down sides to doing the inwales like this or is it better to go with the plans and glue the spacers to the inwales ?

Thanks. Kev.

[Skywoolf]

Thats an interesting idea. I would think it might be a problem bending it the the correct shape though.

[m2c1Iw]

Great idea should work very well and anything to reduce messing with epoxy is good in my book.

[Flatdog]

Great idea should work very well and anything to reduce messing with epoxy is good in my book.

Now that I thought is one of the up-sides Mike.

Kev.

[Boatmik]

I have been looking around the internet at different canoe builds to see how they are built and also to get ideas as to how I can put my own personal touch to our Eureka build . I came across this really nice strip/ply canoe (SF Peterborough 15 Build) What I really like is the way the inwales/spacers are routed out of one piece. I think it gives a really nice clean finish. Is there any down sides to doing the inwales like this or is it better to go with the plans and glue the spacers to the inwales ?

Thanks. Kev.

Some have done this with the Goat Island Skiff inwales.

MIK

[Flatdog]

I managed to find 5mm Gaboon/Okoume ply wood which arrives hopefully at the end of this week. I think most of the builds I've seen here have been 4mm and 6mm so it'll be interesting to see what weight we'll have at the end.

I don't know when the start will be though as they're predicting temperatures here down to -18c . Not good weather for epoxy .

[Boatmik]

Great Flatdog

The Eureka was originally designed to be 5mm, but this thickness disappeared ... so we had to go to 6 or 4 usually.

Best wishes
Michael

[Flatdog]

I picked up my ply today The sheets are a whopping 3120mm x 1530mm which gives me enough to build the whole canoe in two sheets. If I continue the center line from the bottom panel through the extra ply on the end of the sheet I can mark out one deck on each sheet with the point of the deck finishing up between the two bilge panels. Doing it that way I'll have the grain running with the lenght of the canoe.

Bring on the weekend . Even if it'll only be cleaning out the garage .

I'm exited anyway .

Kev.