The Bear Mountain Boat Shop

For a 15' or 15' 3" canoe you can get full length strips out of a 16' board. When I went shopping for lumber I was happy to find that at least at my Kansas lumber yard the 16' boards were much cheaper than longer boards. I wouldn't pick a design based on a single component's cost, but a shorter...

Since I'm building in my basement in dry and sunny Kansas the weather is not a factor. But my project is on hold due to money problems preventing me from buying the glass and epoxy I'll need to continue. So I've got a while to make my seats while I wait for my economic situation to improve. :embaras...

congratulations on a beautiful canoe and a really informative post.

What an artistic design! Very nice.

Do you have any pictures to show us of your herringbone pattern?

Beautiful!

I'd love to see more photos of it out on the water.

Wow, A wonderful canoe for you! I hope you get a lot of enjoyment out of it.
Do you have any sage words for us now that it is done?

Twas just my twisted sense of humor. The Devil made me do it. :crazy
My father was also legally blind from macular degeneration before he died and would greatly magnify things and look off center to read them.

The strips were sliding quite a bit and that was most of the mess. What really helped me was that I made my stems a little long and predrilled a hole in the outer stem strips, inner stem, and stem form. I first bedded the inner most outside stem strip onto the canoe with glue thickened with fine sa...

So I glued my stems on with Elmer's Probond Interior/Exterior Wood Glue. As a note of clarification: The glue mentioned above is Elmer's secret formula, so it is difficult to know for sure what it is. It is not the same as Elmer's regular Probond. It can also be hard to find. Any how it seems to ha...

I don't have my epoxy yet. So I glued my stems on with Elmer's Probond Interior/Exterior Wood Glue. I also was thinking it shouldn't matter much after the canoe is epoxied and fiberglassed with an extra layer at the stems. If I had the epoxy I would have used it though. It seems to be what is recomm...

I made my outside stems out of 3/16ths inch lamination of red oak. I never steamed anything. I just wet them down with hot water bent them around the form and let them dry there. At 3/16ths the oak would just make the bend dry without breaking. After the hot water and drying in place the strips were...

That part about stem mold offsets being given to the outside of the inside stem would have been handy to know. I foolishly assumed the data points given were used to draw the form. I guess the boat building heritage does not run deep enough here on the prairie for me to have been taught that sort of...

Bert304, I think you center the zero station mold, and then go 12" to the outside edge of the next frame from that center point. And then outside edge of form to outside edge of form. But don't take my word for it. I discovered my 2003 version of Canoecraft says my Hiawatha should be 15' 1.5&qu...