Bobs Special Canoe

New year - new project.

As I recently fractured my distal femur in a fall (horrible story) I have been tied to the house on light duties. She says NO duties but I am very uncomfortable and bored.

I have wanted to make a cedar strip canoe for some time but as I am slowed down a bit this is not possible. But what if I make a 1/10 model one? As I have not tried this construction before a build of a model should help to point out the pitfalls before investing full size. And it will take my mind off the pain.

I found a nice plan on the net for general study so I went with that for a start.

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This plan is only good for direction as the different elevations are not to scale or the same scale.
SO I converted the measurements given from imperial to metric. I then made a Cad drawing on Solid Edge (wonderful program and it's free)

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This will be used for construction of the strong-back and formers. The plan shows half heights and profiles as the canoe is symmetrical in plan, elevation, section and perspective views.

Away we go, first task is to construct a strong-back and bulkhead formers to lay the strip onto.

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The formers were faired with a long sanding surform using a 4X4mm strip as a guide.

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Making the inner stems is next.

Broken femur sure does sound painful alright -hopefully this project will help.

You seem to be sanding the station forms to make the strips touch them all the way across. It won't matter with the model but if you build a full size canoe then it might. The usual process is to have the side of the station form that is closer to the end located on the nominal form position. This means that the strips touch the corner of the form at the designed station position. If the form is located this way then sanding the corner off will make the hull slightly thinner. It may not sound like it would have much effect but doing this all the way along can reduce stability noticeably.

Now back to normal programming,.......:U

Thanks for that, fractured leg is six months in and still hurts like hell. I am faring the stations for practice as if I was going full size. :;

It seems to me even though I took great care in making a accurate CAD model and building and placing the stations as near to the measurements as I could - there still was some discrepancies when laying a test strip against the stations.

Fairing brought them into a nice curve but I still don't know why I needed to sand so much to get them right. Which is why I am doing this I suppose.

Anyway onto the stems. I placed the inner stems into position with some temporary brads. On the real canoe these stems would have been laminated up and held in place with temporary screws. I use ply inner stems for strength and ease of installation, they are hardly seen on the finished boat so they will do.

The inner stems were faired up to the 3rd strip level with a small sanding block ready for the first of the cedar strips. The test strip is not fitted at this stage as the stations and the stems need to be covered in tape before gluing the real strips in place. Else the hull will not release from the stations setup.

Cad pic of inner stem

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My apologies for any boaties out there if I am using the wrong terminology here and there I was a Comms Tech not a Shipwright.

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I milled up a lot of strips of pine and red cedar. 4mm X 4mm by 600mm.

Made a jig for the band saw and slipped them through with a finger board to stop them dancing about. Hard to get real accurate and neat off the saw at such a small profile so I made them 5xx5 and block sanded them to 4x4mm

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The stations were all covered with shiny tape to stop the strips from sticking to them and then the guide or initial strip was put in place. The guide strip was left to sag under it's own weight to give a pleasing curve. The strips were matched onto the inner stems at teach end which have been tapered to fit each strip as we go up (down) the jig.

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Strips were fitted from the guide strip to the sheer line as noted on the plans. Alternate pine and cedar strips will be used throughout. As the strips continue up the inner stems the temporary pins holding them in place will be removed and tapering of stems continues to match the changing angle of each strip.

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Fitting strips up to the keel next..

Laying strips around the formers. I had to ease the edge of each strip to accommodate the next strip in order to keep them as close as possible for a flush edge fit. I used a small corner plane to do this, tricky business. I have seen a dedicated shoulder plane used on full size canoes.

I used rubber bands and small clamps to hold each strip while the glue dries.

As I continued up the tumbledown towards the keel the strips had to be bent in two directions as there is considerable twist coming around the stem near the keel, after that it's pretty good going to the keel.

Closing the gap in the bottom of the boat is done with lots of trial fitting and small trims to get it to fit.

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You can see here I have installed one of the outer stems. I used a very thin chisel to make a slot to bring the inner and outer stems together. The stems are resined into place held with tape.

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Next to do is lots of sanding and glassing..

After much sanding - filling - sanding a reasonable faired shape is taking place.

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Close up of bow with trimmed outer stem. I am not fitting a protective keel as it wont be getting wet. In a full size one I think some hardwood strip full length including laminated hardwood outer stems would be best but mabee a little heavy?

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Onto glassing, I used 2 layers of 1oz model airplane woven fiberglass with polyester resin. I still struggle with epoxy and poly is much easier for me.

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A bit tricky at the bow trying to keep glass together and free of air. Glass was rubbery dry in 20 mins so I trimmed it at the gunnels with a razor knife and left to harden overnight.

Glass sanded flush to the top of the gunnels, love sanding fiberglass.

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Happy New Year! fellow woodies.

btw I need an idea for some scrap Huon Pine I have 400/600/50 mm. I would like to make something nice for daughter - in law.

Outside sanding is finished. Inside sanded, now I fitted flotation tanks fore and aft. It was trial and error as I had no template or plan for these. I made some cardboard ones and trimmed them until they were about right then used them as templates for the wood.

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Fore and aft decks were fashioned and fitted to enclose tanks.

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Sanding inside was a real chore, I made some foam formers to hold paper but I was not happy with that. From what I read this is a very time consuming difficult job on a real canoe.

I experimented with pour on epoxy for the inside. It made a lovely shiny finish but was impossible to stop it from running everywhere. On the outside I reverted to finish coat polyester resin which I then cut and polished as in surfboard making, it went very well - I should have done that inside.

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Masking inside to finish all outside.

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Some seats and paddles next.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by duke12

but was impossible to stop it from running everywhere.

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Yep that's what it's designed to do :U.
I've found that with epoxy coating you need to try to squeegee off more than you put on, especially when wetting out glass cloth.
You did say it's a 1/10 scale but how long is it? Guessing between 450 and 500 mm?

Yes coating epoxy inside was too hard. I did try to get as much off as I could but it still was less than perfect. Outside finishing was relatively easy.

The canoe is 1/10 scale and is 480mm finished. At 1/10 scale the original 35/6 mm strips would be impossible to replicate at scale (1/10 of 6mm = .6mm!) So I had to cheat there to still have some strength in the model. This also preventing me from having scuppers fitted to the sheerline - gunnels.

I did manage to get scuppers into the whaling dory I built last time but it was not off plan rather an impression from very old pictures and drawings. I made a CAD plan of that and tried to make it visually pleasing (see previous posts)

Made up some seat frames and wove in some coarse thread to sit on. Coated them with resin and fitted below the sheer-line. I made a portage bar or center thwart and fixed that at the gunnels. Found some piccys of Indian paddles and copied them to make two for the canoe.

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Finished!

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That's all folks.

Now for a new project...

It turned out really well. What's next - a paddlewheeler?