Shop updates - January/February 2012

Finally the first significant snow fall of the year.  It's 5:30 in the morning on January 12th and I haven't been outside yet to measure the depth. It looks like 3-4 inches have fallen so far. Just enough snow to cover the brown grass and hide all the dog poop. There is something very appealing about an early morning snow fall.  It's quiet and most sounds are muffled.  It's a perfect morning for a walk in the still woods under the snow covered pines and naked hardwoods in search of good quality tress suitable for steam bending.  I'm not sure that will happen this morning so I will settle for the next best: building canoes in the semi warm shop while it is snowing outside.

 A view from the workbench window

Speaking of building new canoes, we pulled a Temagami Traveler off the form just before Christmas. This was a canoe Emily and I designed about 2 1/2 years ago. We designed it from scratch, lofted it, and built the form.

Our new canoes are built from quarter sawn northern white cedar ribs and planking.  Typically the all the ribs will come from the same tree as does the planking.  It is no easy feat sourcing material for building like this but we think it's worth it.

 Vertical grain (quarter sawn) rib stock fresh off the table saw

The finished ribs ready for steam bending

Ribs are bent on the form 

 Emily planking the hull

 The hull is just about planked and ready to come off the form

 The hull is off the form and Emily continues to plank it

It is almost more work getting the canoe to the stage of varnish once it comes off the form than it is to get the hull to the stage of coming off the form.

The Temagami Traveler in the finish room

 Old Town Sailing Dinghy

 To insure accuracy, we test bent a few ribs for fitting. 

Everything looked good so we proceeded with more.

 Emily loading the stem box with ribs

 More ribs are bent on the hull.  We can only replace a few at a time due to severely broken ribs.

It takes time, patience is the key, and you just can't rush anything.

Emily installing one of the nearly 40 ribs to be replaced

What is that under the rib? Stones? 

Kingsbury Canoe

The original inner gunwales were made from fairly atrocious stock with lots of knots that resulted in cracks and rails that were broken in several places. 

The Kingsbury getting new inner gunwales. 

            The Kingsbury before being canvassed. 

The new inner rails have been installed and all the structural work is complete

New workbench

We made a new workbench for the shop. It was built from scrap materials lying about the shop.  The construction is mortise and tenon joinery that was draw bored together. It will serve as a utility bench, mainly for metal shaping and sharpening tools.

Dry fitting the legs, aprons, and stretchers.

The finished bench with a 3 inch thick top. 

Canoe building class

 Our canoe building classes finished up the other week.  This is were you can come to our shop and build your own canoe under our tutelage. For more information check out our website.
http://www.wood-canoe.com/classes2.html

Here are Walter and Steve working together on planking the Smoothwater they built.

Decks

Well, what in the world should we show next?  How about decks?  Here are some shots of installing decks in a new canoe.

 Some of the tools used to shape the decks.

Each deck is cut from a pattern and then hand shaped with planes, a draw knife, spoke shaves, and chisels.

 They are secured with silicon bronze screws and finish washers

Note the grain pattern.  Just one of the many attentions to detail around here at Salmon Falls Canoe.

Canoe Seats

The seats we make are made with mortise and tenon joinery.
It takes longer to make seats with mortise and tenons than it does with dowels and they are more difficult to make but they are eons stronger and just a better joint for this application.

 Seat frames with the mortises and tenons cut and ready for assembly

 A nice tight and clean looking fit.

Here the joint is being pegged together.  We make our dowels for pegging.  The wood is split with the grain and hammered through a dowel plate. You can see the plate in the picture just above the upper left corner of the seat.

EM White Square Stern Canoe

Here are some pictures of the EM White square stern canoe under going restoration in our shop.  The first shows the 15 inch wide maple deck steam bent on the bending jig.

Once the deck has dried on the jig, it is removed, shaped to fit, and installed.

15 ribs were replaced.  8 in a row are shown here.

The planking is beveled and each strake over laps the adjoining plank.

The new plank is shaped and the bevel is cut along the edge.

The structural work on the hull is complete.  15 new ribs, the bow has been reconstructed, new inner gunwales, etc



Shop updates 11-5-2011

We are cooking along pretty well in the shop with a good diversity of restorations that include canoes and boats by makers such as EM White, Old Town, Rushton, Kingsbury, Chestnut, Peterborough, and more.  Here are some pictures.  First is a picture from the morning of October 30th looking out the shop window from the workbench.  24 inches of snow!

These pictures come from a canoe we built about 10 years ago.  It's back in the shop for repair work and recanvassing.  It has been used every summer for 50-60 consecutive day canoe trips that have been done in Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, and Labrador.  It has descended some of the biggest rivers in the Hudson Bay watershed and crossed some of the most rugged overland routes Labrador has to offer.  It has traveled on the bottom of float planes, inside rail road cars, and freight planes from the Arctic.  The stem bands are the original ones that we put on when it was built.  This is what they looked like when we took them apart.

This photo shows the last screw securing the end of the stem band. Where is the slot?

This photo shows what a stem band screw should look like.

This photo shows the screw from the first photo above.  You think this canoe has been used? Not bad, eh?

Here is Emily taking apart the sailing Dingy.  This is going to be a fun restoration.  Stay tuned for this one.  We will show rib replacement, steam bending white oak, inner stem replacement, sail rig construction, and many other aspects of restoration.

Mahogany decks from a Rushton Indian Girl

Here is some cedar that was milled up this past week.  Nice tight growth rings.

It was a scary Halloween around here.  We had a paint thinner thief raid the shop!

Here is Emily working on replacing ribs in a 1930's Chestnut cruiser.  This one will get 16 ribs replaced in a row!

Here is Emily again.  Does Dylan ever work?  This time she is taking apart the Kingsbury.

That's all folks.  Time to go back to the shop and keep up with Emily!

Shop Updates 9-26-2011

We have started the restorations for the upcoming fall and winter.  These will get pushed along and then we will start a crop of new canoes and roll into the winter canoe building classes.  Here is what the outside of the shop looked like the other day......

......here is the inside........

.......and here are some of the many projects we will be working on in the following months. This is a 12 foot Old Town Sailing dinghy.  We have done several these sailing dinks before and can't say enough good things about them.  This one will undergo some major work including fabricating the entire sail rig from scratch to the original specs. 

Couldn't resist showing this photo of the painter ring on the dink.  Think it was used much?

Here is a nice pair of Peterborough 15 footers from the same family waiting to be taken apart...............

.............A nice Charles River courting canoe.................

...............And several more including Old Town, Rushton, EM White, an early Temagami, more from the Charles River, etc.

Here are two recently completed restorations.  You will recognize this canoe from an earlier post.  It is a circa 1902/1903 Robertson/Old Town.  Before, after, and completed.

Here is a completed Gerrish

Finish Room

The finish room. Love it or hate it.  In the winter it is the warmest room and in the summer it is the coolest room in the shop.  For the past 10 years we have been using the same varnish buckets.  You can see the 10 year build up, about a ½ inch thick, along the inside.

We have also been using the same screw driver to open varnish and paint cans for eons.  Now wait a minute, where did that screw driver go?

A late model Old Town

Here are some pictures of a later Old Town. The other end of the spectrum from the 1902/03 canoe seen below.

Fiberglass removal.

Emily working on rebuilding one of the rotten ends.

The completed canoe. All finishes are applied by hand.

Shop Updates

It has been a busy 2 months since the last post.  Not only have we gotten over 5 feet of snow so far but we have a great line up of canoes we are currently working on.  These include a Thompson, Gerrish, Carleton, Penn Yan, Chestnut, Rushton, and a very early Old Town to mention a few.  The Old Town was one of the very first canoes to ever roll out of the Maine factory.  It bears a three digit serial number 4XX. We are also working on a few new canoes to include a decked canvas covered sailing canoe.

Here are three photo's of the early Old Town.   

It was really beat up when it came into the shop.

Fortunately we were able to restore the original shape of the hull which was altered due to poor storage.

The new seats being made as per the originals; mortise and tenon joinery.  While the topic is up, we make all of our seats for new canoes with mortise and tenon joinery.  It is much better than the ridiculous dowel joinery commonly used.

I guess we owe a picture of the month for both December and January. How about some video footage instead?

This short video is a compilation of footage that was taken during building a new Chicot earlier this winter.  The 17’ Chicot (pronounced Shee-koh) is our own design and since building the first canoe off the form several years ago there was somewhat of an instant and insatiable appetite for this model. We have built several and there are a lot of placed orders on the queue. If you enjoy this video, check back here in the near future as plan to put up several more.

The Chicot is favored by wilderness canoe trippers and general use paddlers all over.  Here are 2 pictures of it in use up north on the Great Whale during an 8 week canoe trip.  You can visit our website  http://www.wood-canoe.com/ to find out more information on the Chicot and the 8 other canoe models we build. While we are on the topic of the Chicot, we have an order for one to be built as light as possible for an 80 day canoe trip.  The target goal is a fraction under 60 pounds! This one is on the queue for next year and we certainly highlight this canoe as it is being built.