Boat Repair, Restoration, Building
The yoke is a thwart (cross piece) at the balance point of the canoe that you can rest on your shoulders when you’re portaging (carrying) the canoe. This canoe’s yoke is made of Ash, a good hard, but rot-prone wood. Baseball bats are made of Ash too. At any rate, since the main part of this beautifully carved yoke is still perfectly serviceable, an easy fix is to scarf on new ends. Check out my previous article here more about scarf joints. Continue reading “Repairing the Yoke”
When we left off, we had fabricated new breasthook pieces, but they didn’t quite fit as well as I’d like. Check out the previous post if you’ve forgotten.
The trick is to chalk the inside edge of the inwales, fit the breasthook in place, and then see where the chalk transfers to the high spots on the breasthook.
Shave the high spots off with your favorite block plane, and repeat until you get a fit you’re happy with the fit.
You can really dial in a fine fit this way. Not too hard if you know the trick! The last step was to glue it in and coat it with special clear epoxy to seal against water. Then several coats of spar varnish will provide necessary UV protection.
A breasthook is a sturdy piece of wood that marries the sides of the boat together at the stem. It’s a structurally important piece, and can be tricky to fit. So I did what I usually do when I have a tricky piece to fit, I made a pattern. Continue reading “Breasthooks Part 1–Fabrication”
Gunwale is an old nautical term. A wale is a plank on the side of a ship or boat. The top wale on a sailing warship was called the gun wale and was reinforced to carry the stresses imposed by heavy cannon. Typical of nautical terms, it is not pronounced like it is spelled. “Gunnel” is the correct pronunciation. In canoes, it has come to mean the reinforcing strips along the top edge of the boat. Specifically, there are usually two strips, an inwale and an outwale. Continue reading “New Gunwales”
Over the next few weeks, I’ll be writing about a recent project–restoring a strip planked canoe. These canoes are built by nailing thin wooden strips to a set of forms, and glueing the edges of the strips together. Once all the strips are in place, a layer of fiberglass is glued to the outside of the built up canoe. Then the forms are removed and fiberglass is glued to the inside of the boat. This creates a rigid, light structure that one person can easily carry by themselves. And they’re beautiful too! Continue reading “Restoring a Strip Planked Canoe”