A month off

Its been a while since I have last posted to the blog. That is because adding the strips has been a bit of a slow process. My technique of stapling the strips and the clamping them down with masking tape means I have to wait about at least an hour between strips for the glue to dry hard enough to add the next strip. So even on the weekends I have only been able to add a few strips per day. That said I've got about 25 strips on either side now and it is starting to look a lot more like a canoe. I've got the strips up both sides covering the stems now so the next thing to do is to fill in the "football" shape on the bottom. This will be a tricky part because the strips will come together from each side at the centreline and will need to be beveled in two directions and fit precisely together.

Tracy and I are leaving for a month of traveling around Brazil tomorrow morning so the project is on hold until we get back. I am determined to make good progress on the canoe over the second half of the summer so that I can get the canoe sanded, fibreglassed and flipped off the molds in the fall.

It is almost the longest day of the year here in California and it sure feels like summer with temperatures in the mid-90s (30s celcius) today. Its almost a shame to be heading to the Southern Hemisphere where the days will be shorter and the temperatures a little cooler. No I take that back - this trip is going to be great!

So attached are a couple of the latest photos of the canoe. Perhaps we'll add some Brazil photos in the next couple weeks. And then I'll make lots of progress on the canoe in August. Until then...

More Strips...

I've been adding strips 2 or 3 at a time over the last week. I took Saturday off from working on the boat as I ran the Quicksilver 50km race in San Jose in the morning with 5,440 ft of elevation gain (3:51:58, 1st) and the legs were a little too tired/sore to be crouching down beside the canoe. But I was able to get a few strips on on Sunday.

This part of the process is pretty easy. I'm just starting to make the turn of the bilge and I can see how the strips are going to be twisted toward the bow and stern. The staples are holding fairly well but I used a few clamps on the latest strip to hold it tight to the forms.

In the second picture, you can see the flat grain accent strip that I am using on each side of the canoe against the rest of the end grain strips.

I've started stripping

It has been a little while since my last post, but that doesn't mean I haven't gotten anything done. My time has been taken up by a few other things in the last months, but most weekends in April I have been able to get out to the garage to do some stripping. I have had a lot of good comments from people passing by too. I've found its a very good way to meet people in the neighbourhood!

I'm still talking about building my canoe of course. The first thing I have done since my last post was to start shaping the stems. I worked on the bottom half of the bow and stern stems for almost a whole weekend it seems, shaving down the corners with spokeshave and sanding stick so that I will have a rolling bevel on both sides from the gunnels down to the bottom of the hull. The bevel provides a flat area to glue the strips to at each end of the boat and gives the bow and stern a pointed aerodynamic end. Sitting at my desk on the Monday after I realised that my arms were quite tired from all of the sanding. I think when I am more experienced I will be able to do it a lot faster. To begin with I was too nervous about taking off too much wood with with the spokeshave.

With the stems shaped about half way up, I was ready to put on the sheerline strips. (Those are the two along the edges of the hull) I found out immediately that simply stapling the strips on to the forms was not going to work as the strip kept springing back and the staples were popping out of the forms. I solved this problem by cutting out several L-shaped brackets to clamp the strips to the forms. Then I could not decide if I wanted to use staples at all or if I wanted to try the "stapless" method of just using clamps. I ended up cutting out just about all of the brackets that I would need before finally deciding that I would be better off using the staples for my first boat at least. Anyhow, my bracket-cutting efforts would not be wasted as I used them to clamp the sheer strips firmly to the stations before stapling them in place. I will leave the sheer strips clamped this way to keep them secure until the boat is ready to be fibreglassed. Also, I will have some brackets available to clamp the strips as I make the turn around the bilge, where there is a lot of twist in the strips and the staples alone will probably not be able to hold them.

After getting the two sheer strips on, I was able to get a couple more strips on on each side. Once I got the hang of it it went pretty smoothly, laying down a bead of Elmers wood glue in the upward facing cove edge of the strip below and pressing the next strip down firmly while putting in the staples. It was close to 30 degC out today and it started to pretty warm in the garage. When it comes time to fibreglass I'm going to have to start early in the morning or else the epoxy will cure in a few minutes I think.

As always there were lots of people asking me what I was doing while I worked. Most people call the project "ambitious". I met one fellow from Minnesota today who says he has a carbon-fibre canoe but he hasn't found many places to use it since moving to California. hmm. Another elderly lady said to me that I better work faster because summer is almost here!