The Bear Mountain Boat Shop

Put me down firmly in the natural camp. I've never used plastic cane though. One thing I had always wondered about was varnishing. I give all of my boats a coat every other year or so, how do you varnish the seats afterwards if you aren't supposed to varnish over the plastic cane? Anyway,I get mine ...

Well Chris, it's mostly about looks. I think they look more "organic" this way. I'm sure they'll be comfortable as they are quite large (the rear seat is 17" wide x 14" deep and that's just the caned area). The other part of it is, I'm hoping that having the seat and spacer all o...

They're all Cherry with natural cane. The seats started out as 5/4 and the spacers started out as 8/4. Thanks everyone for the kind words. I hope they're as comfortable as they look and even more important I hope that mast seat holds up to the rigors of sailing.

Dick

Certainly you can use the photo, I'm keeping the seats though

In the hope these might inspire some of you to think a little differently, I present to you my latest pair of seats. I won't snow anyone by saying they were easy to make but I think the results were worth the effort. They are in need of several coats of spar varnish but since the water is still very...

Jim, Everything is long grain except for the spacers. I don't anticipate any problems with them as they're going to be through bolted anyway. The stock for the front was roughly 4 inches wide, the back about 3 inches and the sides nearly 6 inches. Except for the glue lines the grain on those spacers...

In my case the costs always get out of hand in the purchasing of new tools. Around here 200 or so will buy the cedar and another 150 or so for the hardwood trim (retail prices). The glass and epoxy are cheapest bought mail order or over the web, figure about 2 gallons of resin not including the hard...

How about just winging it for custom seats? I'll admit to taking some inspiration from Martin Strep's seats. Some came from other canoe makers. Some came from contemporary furniture makers. Most came from my imagination. Here's a picture of the mast seat I have in-process for my sailing canoe. No pl...

I've built 2 canoes and 2 Adirondack Guideboats, all with cherry gunwales (and most of the other trim). It's plenty strong enough, considerably lighter than oak or ash and weathers much better than ash. The only downside to it I can see is it's rather expensive compared to some other woods. At this ...

Rob; If you were to get the panels made up such that you had say 6 to 8 per side you'd have a very good approximation of a "real" guideboat. These strip built boats are as distasteful to some as any plywood boat. Personally, if it looks like a guideboat and rows like a guideboat I've got n...

Thanks Glen. It's my second guideboat (third if you count the 1/3 scale model I built over the winter of 2002). I've built 2 stripper canoes also. To be honest, although building a guideboat is more work what with laminating all the ribs, it's easier to do a really good job with one. The screws allo...