Maple Paddle

After a few months off from canoe building I have started a new small project to get back into it. The maple paddle is being made from a 7/8" light-coloured maple board with strips of dark mahogony laminated on the shaft and handle to make them at least 1-1/4" thick. I picked up the wood from Minton's hardware in Mountain View, which after more than 100 years in business will be closing soon. While the scrap pieces of Mahogony cost a total of 25 cents, the two 5'-6" maple boards came to $100! (The guy who cut them to length for me asked "Have you checked out how much it costs to just buy a paddle from West Marine??") It sure is beautiful wood though. I was debating whether to get a thicker poplar board that wouldn't have required laminating, but I was sold on the look of the maple. I don't have real measurements from the wood I was looking at, but the Wood Engineering Handbook (see sidebar) has properties for Sugar (hard) Maple and Yellow Poplar.

So, while Maple is 1.50 times heavier than poplar, it has 1.55 times the bending strength. Of course these are only estimates as wood properties can vary from tree to tree and depending on where in the tree the wood came from. The upshot is that I should make the paddle blade relatively thin to reduce weight, but this should not compromise on strength. Unfortunately the shaft cannot be made too thin as it needs to feel comfortable in the hand. Looking at the work to failure for the two woods in the above table, it looks like Maple is considerably tougher.
Because Maple is such a hard wood, it is also difficult to work with hand tools. I found this today as I began planing the paddle blade. I initially had the edge of my block plane ground to 30 degrees, but it had difficulty biting the wood. I reground the edge at 25 degrees and found it much better. The hard Maple requires that I resharpen the plane edge frequently.

Ahjumawi

Ahjumawi Lava Springs State Park lies in the Northeast corner of California, about 50 miles East of Redding on Hwy 299. Among its claims are "most remote" and "least visited" state park in California and the "largest system of fresh-water springs" in the country. "Most remote" is relative - it is maybe if you're coming from the Bay Area or SoCal, but certainly not if you live in McArthur, which is 3 miles away. It may be the "least visited", probably because you can only access the campsites by boat, but when we arrived at the launch there were a couple dozen folks bringing in their motorboats after a morning spin on the lakes.The most common description of the park on the internet is "exceptional, even primeval, beauty", which seems to have been copied from the park website. (see side bar)

The primeval beauty didn't strike us at first as we launched from the "Rat Farm" with clouds obscuring views of the peaks, but by the next day I agreed with the description. The lava springs are unique in my experience with cool clear water flowing from the porous lava rock by Ja-she Creek to feed the lakes.
The campsites are relatively close to the launch so, hoping to get in a little more paddling, we headed off downwind to paddle around Big Lake, knowing we'd have to battle to get back. Big Lake wasn't named Huge Lake for a reason, but there is a good hour of paddling to get around it. As if on cue, the breeze picked up and threatened rain as soon as we pointed our bow back upwind. We were rewarded with some great views of Mt. Shasta peaking through the clouds in the distance though. Passing back by the Rat Farm we entered Horr Pond to see that another group had already claimed the first campground. There are actually 3 sites at each campground, but we decided to keep fighting the wind to get a campground all to ourselves.


Being one of the least visited state parks, there is not a lot of information on it to be found and the best map to be found was the simple outline of the lakes that I printed from the park website. Comparing the map to a Google Earth view when we got back home, we found that the map must be quite out-of-date, and for that reason it took us a while to find the Crystal Springs and Ja-she Creek sites. See the comparison above. It appears that a levy holding back the Tule River breached flooding the peninsula between Horr Pond and the river. It actually creates a much larger area to explore by canoe.
We eventually happened upon the Ja-she Creek campsites and set-up there for two nights without seeing any other people for the rest of the weekend. The day after arriving we hiked about 9 miles on the park trails to see the volcanic splatter cones, depressions and lava tubes. Definitely worth the trip!

If you're visiting the park and looking for something to eat on the way in or out check out 'Hal & Kathy's Cook House' in Fall River Mills. It's great! We found it on our drive out after a pack-up and paddle out in the rain.

Burney Falls is worth the side trip.

Back to Spicer!

This time with Scott's parents. Our favorite campsite was free again, even on Labor Day weekend! Nice weather as usual, and we saw a mama bear with her two cubs up a tree - very cute.

See how much the water level has dropped over the past few weeks?

First Trip: Spicer Meadow Reservoir

Two posts today since I didn't get around to posting last weekend about the launch. Read below.
This weekend Tracy and I took the canoe up to Spicer Meadow Reservoir. Its a 6 mile long reservoir at 6500 ft off hwy 4, partly in the Carson-Iceberg Wilderness. I think it is the closest thing California has to a long distance lake trip. The scenery was beautiful and motor boats are limited to trolling motors in the lower half of the lake. We paddled out to the end in about an hour and a half of leisurely paddling and set up camp on a granite hilltop rising out of the water. You get some unique rock formations by the water's edge that you don't normally see in a natural lake. There were a few hazards for the as yet unblemished underside of Thistle, namely numerous submerged and partly submerged pine trees from before the reservoir was flooded. Some of the tops were sitting just a few inches below the surface. Thanks to Tracy's superior navigating skills we got through unscathed. The water was clear down to 20-30 ft and a perfect swimming temperature. Fish were jumping all over the place. Have to bring a rod next time.

Launching

She floats!

Last weekend lots of friends came down to Shoreline Lake in Mountain View with us to launch Thistle for the first time. After putting up with the jokes about what IKEA kit I used, the champagne flowed and she took to the water like, well like a canoe. I don't think I've ever seen it rain here in July, but it was threatening last weekend. In the end there were only a few drops and a few of got to test out the boat. Dan and Jen and little Henrik were there. Pete and Ayse and little Selim were there. Adam and Emily made it down. Catelyn and Andy and little Everett were there and Tracy and me. Nate and Steph and Jude didn't make it for the launch, but came over later to drink some beers.

Thistle

June 28, 2009. She's done. Its 95 degrees F today. A hot day for working, but worth it as I finished Thistle today. All that was left to do was install the seats and thwart and take some photos. Now I'm sitting on the back patio with a beer. ahhh. Its a bit unbelievable to me that I am done building. It was hard to imagine ever finishing at times. Now I'm just looking forward to getting up on a mountain lake. Lots of people helped me out along the way. Thanks to John Mould for lending me so many tools - sometimes for months at a time. Thanks to Andy Orsini without whose help I never would have been able to machine the red cedar strips from full boards or cut the gunwales. Thanks to our great (former) neighbours, Ben and Nicole, who never complained once about me taking over our shared garage. I really wanted to finish before they left, but I missed by a week. At least they only moved a few doors down! Thanks to my parents for getting me started with gift certificates to Home Depot. And most importantly thanks to Tracy for letting me disappear for hours into the garage for a year and half and also for helping me with the worst tasks (epoxying).
So after taking a lot of photos we conducted the inaugural weigh-in. And she weighs .... 55 lbs! A little heavier than my initial goal of 50 lbs, but really not too bad. I think I can portage her for a kilometre perhaps. I was afraid she'd be over 60 lbs near the end.
It will be a couple weeks before we get her in the water as we're heading home to Ontario for the long weekend coming up. I think the launch party will be the weekend after.
So, thats it. Welcome to Doneville, population me.

Penultimate Update

Varnishing is the least enjoyable process in the canoe build, but produces the most satisfaction. It is a constant battle against the forces of dust, fumes and drips. Dust is everywhere and I became obsessive about removing every last speck. That is a difficult thing to do when working in the garage of an old house, especially while Ben and Nicole (the other half of our duplex) are moving out. I swept and vacuumed repeatedly, including the walls and ceilings and the driveway outside. After sanding coats I would vacuum the hull and wash it with a wet towel and wipe it down with a dry one. Then before a new coat I would wipe it down again and then go over it a couple times with a tack cloth to remove the final specks. While applying a coat I would lower the garage door to about a foot from the ground and stuff plastic sheeting in the cracks between the panels to prevent dust from entering. Even doing this I had to wait until 8pm at night when the wind died down to keep dust from blowing in. Mostly closing the garage door brings up the next evil: fumes. An hour of leaning over the freshly spread varnish for an hour in the closed space could make me loopy in a hurry. I pilfered a desktop fan from work to exhaust air under the garage door for the first coat. Air could flow in over the top. This helped, but I grabbed a second fan from work for the final five coats and the two fans on high prevented me from getting high instead. The last scourge of canoe varnishing is drips or runs in the varnish. I found that the varnish would spread on nicely and evenly with no sign of drips until the coat began to skin over on the surface. Somehow at this stage it could still flow underneath and I'd get these wide sagging drips around the turn of the bilge. By the time these were apparent though, it was too late to do anything about it since the varnish was already half dried. The only way to prevent it was to ensure a thin coat to begin with. The badger hair brush was definitely the nicest brush I have used (it doesn't shed at all), but in the end I found it was easier to get a thin, even coat with the 99 cent foam brushes (and I didn't have to clean them!). Warmer temperatures also seemed to help because the coat would set quicker.
Well last night I finished the last of 3 interior coats and 3 exterior coats and I'm glad its over. The results will speak for themselves. Tomorrow I plan to wrap this project up - installing the seats and thwart and taking the victorious final photos! My Mom brought us a bottle of fine Champagne a couple weeks ago and I can't wait to pop the cork.