The Bear Mountain Boat Shop

Oliver lumber in Toronto is where I bought my cedar. They do have a minimum cash order, I think it is $400. But they are quite a bit cheaper than exotic woods I think I paid around $5/bf. You can order your gunwale material at the same time to help make your order up to the minimum. They will delive...

I cut all my strips the other night and am going to start routing the bead and cove in this afternoon. I have kept all the strips in order as they came off the saw and plan n keeping them in order. I reread the section in my very old copy of Canoecraft last night and it talks about alternating dark ...

I had been planning on using dark dyes on some narrow strips for highlight strips and to make a chevron type pattern using pine and a piece of stained cedar. After reading these posts I am rethinking this plan. Has anyone tried this?

I have done a couple of paddles using a round over bit to rough out the shaft. The one thing you have to watch is that you use a radius small enough that the pilot bearing has something to ride on when doing the third and fourth corners. I make the top of the shaft a smaller diameter so I use a smal...

That was probably my next door neighbor. My shop is a little smaller but I can open my back door and have more room for long cuts. I am cutting my strips from 14' long 8/4 lumber because I have about 200bf of that in my rack. I have cut some boards to 7/8" x 1 7/8". I have three of the dia...

If I had seen your post earlier Rob we could have worked somthing out I am in Hamilton and have a Patternmaking shop. I have my strongback and moulds hanging from the ceiling right now. I started cutting my strips but got too busy, come fall I am going to get moving on the canoe.

If you want to counterbore the hole rather than countersink the hole for a flat hear screw. A faster and more accurate way to counterbore an existing hole is to take a scrap of thin plywood or masonite then using a forstner bit the diameter of your counterbore drill a hole in the scrap. Then take th...

Make sure you tie the first canoe on in the middle before you put on the second.

I have transported two canoes on top of a car lots of times tripping. Driving driving up to 400-500km each way. The best way is to use racks with wider bars these can be wood bolted to the regular bars, WATCH YOUR HEAD GETTING OUT OF THE CAR. Most of the time we did not have wider racks and simply t...

I used this method for my Freedom 17 today, it was much faster than using carbon paper. A week ago I used the carbon paper method for the first four stations after trying the pounce wheels from Lee Valley which didn't work at all. Today after I picked up more Mdf for the forms, I took some spray adh...

Thanks for the replies I will have to think about getting the new edition.

I guess I could have bought the new book book instead of the plans. Is there much difference in the books appart from the plans?

I have an older version of Canoecraft what are the five new designs in the newer edition of the book?

Ask someone at a local commercial woodworking shop (Cabinet shop, Patternmaking Shop, Furniture making shop) where they get there lumber. The larger commercial lumberyards often have a minimum order and cam be miserable to deal with but they can be as much as half the price of a smaller yard. The lu...

I built one of these canoes about ten years ago. It was VERY light, quite rigid and did paddle quit nicely. The downsides were the freeboard was to highmaking it tough to handle in a wind. It was very delicate, the longditudinal stringers were 3/8" square and I had to be very carefull putting a...