Thread: Quick Canoe - "Disposable" Canoeing - very simple ply canoe - building pics

Some pictures from "Pepe" (who we know as Perttu in Finland) off the PDRacer forum who is building his Quick Canoe in tricky conditions.

I find it hard to wrap my mind around it!!! Those guys (meaning all the far northern hemisphere builders are tough boatbuilders.

Before the keel is added there is a metre of snow each side.



After the keel and seats are added there is still a metre of snow.



Full set is here - Quick Canoe being built in snow - a set on Flickr

Best wishes
MIK

Originally Posted by Boatmik

Some pictures from "Pepe" off the PDRacer forum who is building his Quick Canoe in tricky conditions.

I find it hard to wrap my mind around it!!! Those guys (meaning all the far northern hemisphere builders are tough boatbuilders.

Before the keel is added there is a metre of snow each side.


After the keel and seats are added there is still a metre of snow.


Full set is here - Quick Canoe being built in snow - a set on Flickr

Best wishes
MIK

At least it's not raining...

How the blazes do those guys get the epoxy to go off at that temperature

It'll go off in a couple months when it warms up. Right now it's just frozen solid.

The freezing solid can happen in any winter environment. It is usually not true freezing but like honey,

Honey is effectively sugar dissolved in water. If the temperature drops enough you get crystallised honey. Often warming it up in a hotbox or in hot water is enough to keep it liquid for several days or months before the solids decide to "come out of solution" again.

On the other hand - MAM might just mean frozen - like really frozen - looking at that snow again!!!

MIK

Wink wink. )

First Lake trials of the solo version:
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJNjOBfoiPg]YouTube - Quick Canoe Solo Trial[/ame]

Where's the other canoe, the one you were drag racing?

Looks like you know a thing or three about handling a canoe.

Thanks, It was more for my canoeing than my boat building ability that Michael Storer wanted me to build and give feedback on this design. I took my time and used epoxy in cold weather so it took weeks rather than hours to build. It is a very easily built boat and my initial impression is that it handles surprisingly well. I'll have the boat up at the Mount Storm, WV Messabout the end of July if you want to try her out. I'd love to see your GIS.

This is a narrower boat than the existing plan. The idea is a "backpacker solo" type boat.

You were right - it looks quite twitchy compared to the stand up stability of the 5" wider boat of the released plan.

Be interesting to see the difference the skegs and keel will make.

Looks way prettier in moving 3D than I had thought. Probably just the wood talking!

Paul's son Eli has travelled at very high levels in competitive canoeing. I am really happy his dad has been helping me on this one - as it is clear the old man knows a thing or two as well!

MIK

Just got an email from a chap named Jon. He has been busy.

His build wasn't as fast as Rick's but still creditable.



This is what he wrote. He is still waiting to get it in the water.

Originally Posted by Jon

Michael, I just finished my Quick Canoe 155 and wanted to give you an update.

Attached are some images taken just hours after the paint hardened up tonight. We'll be taking her out for a ride tomorrow afternoon and I'll send you some more pictures.

I'm in the middle of a John Welsford Pathfinder build, and on realizing that it wasn't going to be finished soon enough for us to use this spring, I decided I needed a quick boat for us to play with on our family camping trips. The Quick Canoe looked like a good match to me. Crazy to start another boat in the middle of a build, but I did anyway.

I am a slow builder. I logged about 33 hours start to finish over a little less than 3 weeks. I included all activities in the log, like preparing/cleaning the shop, building, scarfing gunnels and inwhales, paint prep, cleaning shop more, painting, etc. Anything related to the build that took time, I logged. This is the 4th boat (including the pathfinder) I've built over the last 10 years and so was fairly familiar with the methods but by no means accomplished.

I used 5.2mm Birch floor underlayment for the skin. This was my experiment, as I usually use marine ply, but it was going to be a "disposable" canoe, so I opted for this rather than driving across town for the marine ply. At least I would have a data point on how quickly this kind of stuff will fail.

I quickly wished I had gone across town. Nothing wrong with the wood, but when you put work into something like this, you realize that you don't want it to just fall apart in a year or so, even at only 33 hours.



I am sorry that I did not take any pictures of the construction. I actually only realized after working on it that the design is new and there are not many photos so far.

I found the plans excellent and did not have any questions during the build. I used some "heavy duty" duct tape and it held everything with no problem.

I will update you again after our trial run this weekend.

Jon

One more pic of the Quick Plywood Canoe

My reply

Originally Posted by boatmik

Hi Jon,

I just put your letter and pic up on my forum
https://www.woodworkforums.com/f169/d...ml#post1132515

I have a little bit more time now than over the weekend. I think there is some underlayment that is WPB (I feel I am getting my acronyms mixed up) bonded, the same as marine ply. That will be fine.

However I would recommend you find a place you can hang the boat upside down under a roof somewhere - or maybe under your house. If water doesn't collect even a boat of less than perfect materials can give a long service life. Basically my argument is that I do reduce the expected longevity if cheaper materials are used because some boats only last a short time. However many will last a lot longer than that.

So don't be too worried the boat might deteriorate suddenly - just try and store it upside down so water cannot collect inside or under it.

Do you still have the paper where you worked out the times? Can you take a digital photo of it so I can put it up on my website?

Best wishes
Michael

More from Jon

Originally Posted by boatmik

Looking forward to a paddling report. I have been telling my serious canoeist friends that it is designed to be the "least bad very simple canoe". But a couple of them really like it (and the experimental narrower single person one.

Originally Posted by jon

I have a funny story that I will try to keep short:

I have almost no experience canoeing.

I claim to be a sailor of some small skill, but the following account may make you wonder. The canoe is intended for my family (me, wife, and two small kids 2 and 6). But, on the first run, it was me alone (other participants wanted to see if it floated). It was a breezy (very) day on a small lake and I had a little worry about that, but wanted to get on the water, so I did.

I was sitting on the back seat (I built to specs assuming equal weighted people in front and back). I could never turn up into the wind to turn around. I thought that might be the case, so I hit the bank and dragged the canoe back to the car (not very far). Only slightly discouraged, I thought we'd try again the next day.



That night, I thought about fact that I had no weight in the front of the boat and vague notions of forces for and aft but..... The next day, I convinced my 6 yr/old to sit in the front. She loved it, and the wind started to kick up, and wow, suddenly I could steer into it.

Once I convinced my whole family to climb aboard, we had mom and 2 kids up front....this time when the wind started to blow from the beam I found that my end of the canoe gave way slightly....I suddenly realized more clearly what was happening. I had been having lee helm, and now we had weather helm. (i told you I was more of a sailor)



I asked my 6 year old to crawl under the spreader and sit on my side, and then we seemed to be perfectly balanced. Once I had the thing in balance for and aft, it seemed very easy to handle in the wind. Turning does take a little space, but I like that at this point.

I then realized that if I'm in the boat alone and wind is troubling the bow, I can just kneel down near the center spreader and it seems to take care of it. I have a funny picture of me in the boat and you can see the bow skeg completely out of the water....no wonder I couldn't fight the wind.



The whole thing was a nice demonstration of moving around the center of lateral resistance with for and aft trim...I suspect all of this is very obvious to anyone who has spent more than 20 minutes on a canoe. I will attach a few photos for your amusement. We also hope to get it out next weekend as well, maybe it won't be windy.



Can't remember if I mentioned it, but it weighs in at 61lbs. I did put 2 coats of epoxy inside and out and several layers of paint and varnish. The birch ply didn't seem particularly lightweight to me. In any case, I pick it up by myself, and it is very easy for my wife and i to carry it to the water.

I just boiled a piece of the ply for an hour....on one edge an outer veneer pulled up slightly, but it mostly remained intact. Not sure if that is good or bad news. In any case, the boat will be stored hanging upside down in a garage, so I think it will be ok.

The times were recorded in a spreadsheet...here they are. In many cases I did not separate out the preparing shop times, but it was included in totals, so if you see 3 hours sanding and epoxy coating, that might also include cleaning up, putting away tools, vacuuming sanding dust, etc, etc.

0.25 preparing shop
0.25 preparing shop
0.5 skeg fins and keel batten
1 ripping and scarfing gunwales and inwhales
4 lofting cutout and joining bottom and sides
1 surface prep and epoxy coating inside surfaces
3 sanded epoxy, assembled boat with duct tape
1 glued inner fillets
1.5 preparing and glass taping chines and stems
1.5 2nd coat of epoxy, 1st over hull, cutout and glued seats together
0.75 2nd epoxy coat on hull
1.5 refit gunwhales, rounded corners, started sanding inner fillets
1 glued on gunwhales
0.25 fitted inwhales
0.25 cut shaped and fit spreader
0.5 glued inwhales and spreader
1.5 fitted skeg/keel
1 glued skeg
0.5 sanding tape edges
0.5 surface prep
1.5 preparing and gluing knees and skeg doublers
0.5 surface prep
4 fitting seats, gluing in seats
1 prep for paint, 1st coat outside
0.5 varnish inside
1 1 coat outside, varnish inside
1 2 coats outside, varnish inside
1 2 coats outside, varnish inside
1 2 coats outside, varnish inside

More pics of the Quick Canoe built in plywood

An extension to all of this is that Paul Helbert who built the skinnier prototype has one of my sailing rigs fitted to one of his more conventional canoes. He steers with a paddle but has written a fair bit about the delights of getting the boat balanced and then making it point up or bear away by shifting his weight forward and aft.

Both Paul and Jon's writing is a good example about when a person understands one type of boat very well that the knowledge is transferable. Paul knows a lot about canoes and paddling and Jon knows a lot about sailing.

In each case it transfers across.

We could also add TomTre's experience of my rowboat which was drawn with an oversize skeg. (easier to trim something down than glue something on!). The boat handled in a pretty average way in wind until he trimmed the skeg down the right amount so the boat was balanced when rowing across the wind. Before, going upwind or cross wind the bow kept falling off. Now it is well behaved.

MIK

Here is a set of photos showing some details of rigging a modified version of Michael's Quick Canoe 155-solo prototype, for sail. The modification is that the skegs, which work well for the QC 155, prevented this narrow prototype from turning freely, so they have been almost completely removed. The sail rig is Michael's "Drop-in" rig.
Rigging the Benjamin Harrison for sail - a set on Flickr