I did find a cool site recently though. Horrible Logos is a site that creates….well horrible logos. I love the idea of the site. He needs beer. I need a logo. For $5 he creates a logo and then uses your money for beer. Pure genius. I couldn’t pass up the chance to get one for the site.

I thought it was a great idea. Probably a little better than I could have drawn on my own. I’m in graphic design at school and could have come up with something on the computer that would have been great but why spend all that time fiddling around with it when I can get one that’s so horrible for only five bucks?

Thanks Horrible Logos. I hope your beer tasted as bad as my logo looks!

I will build a canoe this way some day. Maybe not the next one but all that bending and banging nails looks like a lot of fun. I can’t imagine it would be very cheap to get the metal bands made up for the form but I have seen other ways of doing this process and if you were going to build several canoes it would probably be worth the expense.

I had to make a couple changes to how I stripped the boat due to the thinness of the original lumber that I cut the strips from. I couldn’t staple the strips on with the staples running perpendicular to the strips. When I started the first strips and tried stapling them I was blowing out the inside cove edge on a lot of the strips. Running them parallel to the strips sometimes causes little blowouts in the center of the strip but will be less of a problem once I begin finishing the inside of the canoe. I think I may have more splits and blowouts on the inside than many other canoe builders because of the age of the lumber. Most lumber gets more brittle and subject to splitting the older it gets. Most of the pieces don’t fall off and are just hanging there. I think once I pull it off the forms and flip it over I will spend many hours gluing and pushing hundreds of these little splinters back into their spots. Guess that’s what I get for being so cheap

I’m getting to the bilge now and there is a lot of twist in the strips from the stem to center form of the boat. I think my strips are probably going on easier than most since they aren’t as wide as the strips most people use. I haven’t had to use clamps, blocks or any other tricks so far to get them to stay. I have had to add an extra staple holding two strips together in between the forms here and there but not too many.

Lots of staples

Cut the ends carefully!

After getting the fist strips straightened out I got a little excited and started running a few strips. Well one end wasn’t as perfect as I thought it was and it took three strips to get the strips to cheat it up a little to get the ends to line up perfectly. I didn’t go with full length strips and I started by scarphing the joints but found that just cutting the ends square and butting them together leaves a much nicer joint. 

I sure am wishing I had a hot glue gun to make this part go quicker but this is by far the most pleasing part of the project so far. 

Clamping the butt joint

So after reading and searching a lot of blogs I set to with my spokeshave. It was a little hard getting used to but once I got the hang of it I was making long thin shavings with ease. This was very pleasing. It took a lot longer than I thought it would but was a lot of fun. After a while I built enough confidence and took my block planes to it. I found my little baby plane(picked up at Home Depot) worked best. I got a little carried away here on the first stem where it takes the sharp turn but nothing too bad and it covers up.

Tools of the trade

I started at the bottom and used a strip to check the angle as I shaved away. After I was comfortable I’d use the small plain for all the rough shaping and then use the spokeshave to finish up once I was close to the final shape. It’s very easy to make a rounded surface with the spokeshave but is easily flattened out with a few light passes with the plane.

There is a lot to remove at the sheer end of the stem and very little at the bottom end. On this canoe the profile changed pretty quickly near the turn.  I did a lot of checking here with a test strip to make sure the angle was correct.

As soon as I have my first two strips glued to length I’ll be stipping!!!!

Lots of shavings.

200 rips on the table saw

It was a long wait getting a few things together before I could mill the strips. I had all the cedar I need for the boat stored in the garage since December. I was working on a water damaged condominium and the homeowner had a lot of cedar on the walls that they didn’t want so I salvaged a lot of the 1×4′s. Generally you need 60-70 full length strips for a canoe. Most of the boards I had were about seven feet long. After ripping them all I ended up with about 200 strips which should cover the boat. It wasn’t too hard I just had a friend help while I ripped the boards into 1/4″ strips. I made them a hair big since this is my first canoe.

After that I purchased a router table. I was thinking I could use a corebox and roundover bits to create the bead and cove on the edges but I wasn’t able to get it to work so I had to purchase the specialty canoe bits and wait. Then it was more waiting while I had some back trouble for a couple weeks. I was going to mill them one night after work but the big canoe bits in the router are just so loud I thought I’d wait for the weekend. So on Easter weekend I wasn’t able to do the work on Saturday and thought it wouldn’t go over well running the router table on Easter so I waited another week.

My friend Sean mentioned his father had a router table and that he could bring it over and run both edges at the same time.

Dual router tables!

This worked out great as we set up a little production line where he would mill the bead side first and lay them between the tables and then I’d mill the cove and set them aside. The only issue was the lumber was already milled on all sides when I got it so I didn’t want to plane them down anymore since they would be even thinner so there was some variation in board thickness. This made some of the strips a little hard to push through the featherboards but overall the process went pretty smooth. You’ll be a happy canoebuilder if you have some dust collection for this

If you don’t have any dust collection be prepared to eat some cedar. Once all the boards were milled I sorted them out by color from lightest to darkest and set them all on their shelf in the garage. I plan on starting with the darkest boards and have it get lighter the farther I go down the sides. I’m planning on Walnut trim for the boat so ripped several strips and milled them while I was at it with the cedar. I had ideas for some kind of repeating pattern in the accent strip but have decided I’ll just run two walnut strips with the lightest cedar strips I have in between them for some good contrast.

Sean making some dust

Drying out

After waiting and fretting I finally decided to steam-bend the stems for the canoe. This process went much easier than I had anticipated and wasn’t worth all the apprehension I felt leading up to it. In preparation I machined 12 strips of walnut 1/4″ x 7/8″ x 4′ for the laminates. As suggested in Canoecraft I used a helper when bending. My wonderful wife hadn’t done more than look at it up to this point and was very handy with the C-clamps while I bent the strips over the forms. I added a funnel to the bottom of my steam tube to hold the wood in and to direct the water that condensed on the sides of the tube back into the teapot. I think it reclaimed some water but I still ended up with a huge mess on the floor.

Drip, drip, drip

I bent each end separately steaming six strips at a time. I let the teapot heat for a while until it started producing good steam and then put the tube on and let it get good and warm. Once ready I put the strips in and let them cook for about 20 minutes. With several C-clamps ready to go I pulled them out and my wife clamped the keel end first and in a steady motion I bent the strips over the form. You don’t have more than a minute or so with Walnut but once the first clamp is set you can bend the strips and your helper can take their time putting a couple more clamps on. It didn’t take very much pressure to hold and the first clamp we put on was a little tight but I loosened it until the strips just started to pull away from the forms and then tightened it just enough to pull them back.

The first set went smooth. The second set I had to make an adjustment after the first clamp was set but was still able to easily bend the strips around the form. We just put one clamp on the keel end then one at the sharpest bend and one on the sheer end. After that I placed extra clamps to even the pressure out. When I laminate the stems with epoxy I’ll use every clamp hole but it isn’t necessary at this point.

This step really is very easy. I don’t know why building a canoe seems so daunting to so many woodworkers. I have seen so many comments online by folks who build furniture, models and many other amazing things that I really don’t think I could build who haven’t built a boat because they were intimidated by it. I haven’t gotten too far on the canoe yet but my woodworking experience consists mostly of framing and siding houses. Everything is pretty straight forward and there is a ton of information on the web about it. I’m not sure why so many people think about it but don’t do it. Nothing about the process so far has been even remotely difficult.

Extended past the strongback

I think Mark Twain said it best:

“20 Years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bow lines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the tradewinds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

So if you are thinking about building a canoe get some plans and go to the lumber store and get some cedar. I’ve never felt so amazed about building something and I haven’t even really started building it yet

Smooth and protect your table

I have a little contractor style table saw. It has an aluminum table with some kind of coating on it. It’s pretty smooth but I wanted to make it a little smoother before ripping all the strips for my cedar strip canoe so I grabbed a piece of beeswax I had laying around(great for push saws) and applied it to my table. There are several types of wax or oils that can be applied to smooth and protect the table of your saw. I chose the beeswax because it was sitting in my toolbox. Most anything is safe if it won’t transfer to the wood. Anything containing silicone is not good. I have even seen people use candle wax for the table. If your saw has a cast iron top it is a good idea to put some kind of coating on it to protect against rust.

I first rubbed the beeswax over the central portion of the table. Then I took a cloth rag and using a lot of elbow grease rubbed it in for some time. It was really cold outside while doing this and the wax wasn’t co-operating so I grabbed my wife’s hair dryer and applied a little heat to it and got much better results. Once it was rubbed in it was a little thick so I took a razor scraper and carefully scraped the whole table to remove the excess. After letting it sit for a while to cool I rubbed it in again with the rag and the table is much smoother than before.

If you like cheap like I do you could try candle wax or beeswax if you can find it. If you want the best there are several great products that come in a spray for protecting your power tool tables like Top-Cote. I have used this spray and it works really well.

A lot of people like Johnson paste wax as well and I have seen this recommended a lot in online woodworking forums. Whichever you choose just be sure to rub it in well and use it often if you have problems with rust on your table.

High tech steamer

I have seen several different setups for steaming wood. There are some pretty elaborate setups to be found online but I decided to go with a setup I’ve seen several other strip builders use with success. I took a trip to the local lumber store and picked up a 10′ section of PVC pipe for $6. I then went to the local thrift store and picked up a tea pot for $6. I had a little butane burner sitting on a shelf in the garage that someone had given me a couple years back. I wanted to do a test run here as I was unsure whether the PVC would handle the heat. Some people have had problems with different types of PVC tubing and I didn’t want this thing melting when I was ready to bend the wood. It’s the type that is solid white on the outside and black corrugated on the inside. I could have picked up some metal dryer ducting but it was three times the price. I cut the PVC down to about 6′ and shoved a few rags in the top. After cutting the lid off the teapot I just set the pipe on top of it and started heating the water. It took a while with my little butane burner but made some pretty good steam!

Before I actually steam the laminates I’m going to screw a block to the bottom leaving a little hole for the teapot spout to keep the strips up in the pipe.

Marking the centerline

Once all the canoe forms were finished it was time to mark the center-line and station lines on the strongback. I started by marking the center on each end of the strongback. It doesn’t have to be perfect just get it pretty close. I then tacked a nail on the center-line at each end and stretched fishing line across it. I  made a few marks directly under the center-line and then used my 6′ level to connect the marks. I then checked it with the fishing line to make sure the whole line was nice and straight. I then marked all the lines for the station molds. I took some time here and used a mechanical pencil to make the most accurate lines possible. I didn’t have any lumber thick enough to make the station blocks but my neighbor had some short 2×6′s laying around and donated them in the interest of seeing this thing keep going. I ripped them down on the table saw and then screwed them to the strongback from underneath. 

Pretty cramped in here!

I used spring clamps to hold each station mold at it’s location making sure each was centered. This was the most exciting part so far. Finally I can see what she’s going to look like. I eyeballed down the whole thing and the center-lines at the top of the molds were pretty close. I then took a cedar strip and checked to see that everything lined up well. I took a lot of time here with the strip and found a couple high spots in the center of my number 2 forms. Afterwards I spent an evening walking around the whole thing and looking at it from every angle I could. I found a few spots on a couple of the forms that needed some fairing. Whenever I found a spot I used a pencil to scribble on the area I wanted to sand down a bit. 

At this point I would just pull one form that needed some work and lightly sand it on my belt sander placing it back on the strongback a few times to check until I was happy with it.