Cedar Strip Canoe 2

Happy September to everyone, I thought I would let everyone know we have a foundation class starting the 3rd of October and a Craftsman rocking chair class starting the 10th of October, your own hand made rocker is something you can’t buy!! Then we also have a Blanket chest class starting the 31st of October, a very busy month!!

I’ve come to the next steps in the canoe building process, marking and cutting out the plywood station molds. After building the straight-back I used some carbon paper to transfer the patterns from the canoe plans to the plywood for the molds. Using the 1” re-saw blade on the bandsaw helped tremendously with giving fare curves when cutting out the molds. After cutting out the molds, I used a hand-plane and spokeshave to smooth the cuts from the bandsaw. Each mold has a centerline, those centerlines are very important because that is what ensures the molds are all perfectly in-line with the straight-back.

Before I screwed the stem molds in place I steam-bent the inside stem (cyprus) and outside stem (cherry). I used a hot plate I bought for sand-shading, then found a 2” steel pipe that was the perfect size for the stems and connected it to a tea kettle. I steamed them for about 25 min. before bending them around the stem molds. It was a little scary bending the stems because the pieces weren’t air dried or split, but it worked. After the stems were steam bent, I let them dry for 48 hours before gluing them together with epoxy. After all the molds are secured in place with several screws, I used a simple jig to run a string line along the tops of the molds going from stem mold to stem mold (the bow and stern molds). Again making sure all the molds are lined up with each other.