The Bear Mountain Boat Shop

For the butternut canoe, I'm going for bulletproof durability rather than light weight. A double 6 oz FG bottom, cherry gunwales, seats, and thwarts, and a white oak shoe keel should put it over 70 lbs, but I'll be doing whitewater with it so I want the extra strength. Parts for a second Prospector,...

Moonman,
Thanks for posting your chart. It "cuts to the chase" and is ideal for a canoebuilder's needs.

Can I copy it without running amok of copywrite laws?

I'll be starting two Prospectors soon using clear butternut for the hulls. Butternut's a hardwood so won't sand as easily, but the weight of the boards seem almost as light as the white cedar I usually use. I'm searching for a website which lists densities of various woods. Any suggestions? I've bee...

The previous reply about spending the time to get perfectly milled edges with the router operation also applies to ripping the strips. Perfect uniformity prevents a host of problems that will plague you if you're working with "kinda OK" strips. Get an ultra-thin kerf blade, then rip the st...

Dave, The camper fenders look great, and are exactly what I need for the 4-canoe trailer I'm finishing out of marine mahogany plywood. The trailer has a 15"-high storage compartment beneath the canoe racks that is sheathed in the plywood. I'm at the stage to add fenders, and I was going to just...

Non-full-length strips are a great advantage when it comes to closing in the bottom along the keel line. With full length strips, you must guesstimate how much length to add so the strips will fit snugly along the keel line. Canoecraft recommends adding about 5/8", but this changes as you get c...

Hi Tom, Thanks for the info about basswood for strips. Your point about not milling to a knife is well taken--I always leave a small flat rather than mill to a true knife edge. I also finish plane all my strips with new, sharp blades to a uniform 1/4" + 0.020 thickness, so they are extremely un...

My building partner and I just picked up enough select clear 15/16" Butternut boards to build two 16' Prospectors. The boards seem nearly as lightweight as the Northern White Cedar I normally use for strippers. Does anyone have experience milling Butternut? I'm particularly curious about Butter...

I'd like to completely remove the multiple coats of spar varnish from an older cedarstrip hull, but not disturb the epoxy underneath. Is there a chemical stripper I can use to remove the spar varnish without eating into the epoxy?

Gary

Even on the 16' Prospectors I've been building, the stem mould width must be reduced from the 3/4" I started with to under 1/2" along most of the top part of stem. If you've stretched the boat to 17', the ends are probably even finer, so the stem angle will be even less. You may end up wit...

Glen, Thanks for the quick reply. You're right, of course, and we were able to proceed based on your reply. I'm helping a friend build his canoe, and when we saw the problem develop, we glued up short panels to cover the areas in question. While the glue was drying, I posted my question. By the time...

Tom, I built the 18' Guide from Gilpatrick's book, and find it to be wonderful on flatwater and vey efficient. Two average paddlers can easily beat an 18' kevlar Winona Minnesota II in a race when both are fully loaded. It's a natural as a BWCA canoe for two paddlers with three duluth packs. As buil...

The Prospector we're stripping needs four cheater strips (one on each side on both ends) to make our accent strip horizontal. We started stripping with a bottom football then stripping toward the sheer.Now that we're past the turn of the bilge, the side strips angle upward near the ends about 2"...

Glen, I routinely finish my gunwales in a way that might be a fix for your ash fungus problem--if the fungus is only on the bottom of the gunwales. Because I use my canoes hard in whitewater, I put the "bulletproof" epoxy/graphite/silica treatment on the bottom from the 3" waterline d...

I'm willing to try a urethane auto clearcoat if it has equal or superior UV protection for the underlying epoxy as does spar varnish. The price for top-quality urethane auto clearcoat is roughly the same as good spar varnish ($30-$40/ qt.), but only two sprayed coats are needed for the same mil thic...