The Bear Mountain Boat Shop

The gunwales are scarfed and shaped, I have borrowed a drill press to cut a few slots for the inwales (will finish later today), the seat frames are glued and will be drilled with the drill press, the cane is in my house and ready for action. Things are moving along! My blog has updated bits and pie...

Oops, I first posted this in the wrong forum... Thanks to a tip from pawistik, I've decided to use solid inwales on my Freedom. I'll insert a few slots as shown in the picture here: http://www.canadierforum.de/t2273f17-Swift-die-neuen-Boetchen-sind-da-zB-Shearwater.html I'm not sure how wide to make...

Hi,
Should a person varnish the seat frames prior to caning? Seems like a good idea to me but thought I should ask.

I was using clothes pins, but removed them in fear that maybe I didn't have enough cloth down inside the hull. I find that once the epoxy hits, the cloth is quasi-stuck to the wood such that movement is very restrictive. I'll try to be more patient with the clips tonight. Point taken on the pushing ...

Last night I fiberglassed 1/2 the inside of my hull. It was terribly difficult. I've built a kayak before but the wider canoe hull seemed to make lifting of glass on the side to be even more difficult to deal with. I was getting glass bubbles/wrinkles the size of apples appearing, and while I tried ...

I did the inside of my hull last night and did not pre-coat. That is the first time that I've done it that way. I can't say that I noticed it being much different. I did see that I had to go over a few areas again while applying the epoxy, because the wood soaked up a lot of epoxy. Other than that, ...

thanks for the tips. I don't have a disc sander so I won't be going that route. I do have a belt sander that can get jigged up like a disc sander, but I don't think it would be accurate enough to rely upon. Below is a video of me using my belt/disc sander. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oodlRI139-c

Hi Vann, I think if done correctly, a precoat will only add marginal weight. The precoat is supposed to just saturate the wood, not sit on top. This happens whether you precoat or not. If you don't precoat, you just have to be a bit more vigalent when wetting out the fiberglass. The concern is that ...

Randy, how does your yoke work out for kneeling solo? I'm not much of a canoeist, so i'm not sure of the pros/cons of yokes, thrawts, etc. But I'll be adding mine in a few weeks I hope. Any suggestions? btw, I would think that shortening a Freedom 17 to 15 would be quite drastic. That's not to say t...

I also used board buddies, but it sounds like you're already set up with feather boards. I'm not sure a person could cut strips with the guard and riving blade in place. I like using mine when I can, but often my setup just doesn't allow for it. http://shmish.smugmug.com/photos/475636636_5AoGf-M.jpg

I was away for a week, so just caught up on this thread now. I haven't bought a router, and likely won't now. I've decided to not add scuppers to my inwales, and I'm going to try and hand chisel mortises for my seat frames. We'll see how it goes...

Fantastic Tim, I hope you have fun with this one!

I've cut some scarfs on 6' long boards using my table saw and a jig like John Michne has shown on in the tips and tricks forum. Soon I need to scarf some ash and cherry for the gunwales. However, these planks are 10' long and I'm thinking they will be a bit hard to manage. Even with the 6' boards I ...

Hi, After my previous thread I decided to go with the mortise and tenon joint. I also would like to get a plunge router. I've had a Ryobi fixed base router but for a few years I've wanted a plunge. I'm obviously a hobbiest and I can say that I've been happy with tools from Ryobi (router, sawzall, co...

I glued and clamped my trapazoid seats and then drilled through the seat rail and styles and inserted dowels with epoxy. The dowel ends accent the cherry seat rails and it looks quite nice.. I have recently purchased a long awaited bisquit router that i will be using on some other seats for my next...