The Bear Mountain Boat Shop

Another source of the stainless machine screws in 2", 4" or 6" length is Northwest Canoe. They sell them as a set, with screw, cup washer, and nylock nut: http://www.shop.northwestcanoe.com/category.sc?categoryId=17 If you are using brass or bronze, the countersunk washers from Lee Va...

The difference is the amount of UV protection.

My guess is that it could be rather difficult to get the cloth stretched out as smoothly as it can be when it hangs loose. The staples would be likely to cause their own little ridges where they pull, and to fray the weave near them. This is not to say it won't work, but that it's likely harder to d...

Gilpatrick's book mentions lap joints as an option, and he's overseen builiding of enough canoes that if they were structurally too unsound, he'd know. A plunge router can cut clean mortises pretty easily. I used the Frid jig for cutting seat mortises. Here's a link describing the jig: http://www.hi...

Glue alone will be as strong as the wood, if the grain runs the same way in both pieces along the join. And how strong do the decks need to be? If you are concerned about strength if someone picks up the canoe by the deck, you can add a small thwart that's easier to grab, cut a decorative edge to th...

Gilpatrick's book has a section on building woodstrip canoes for whitewater. If I recall correctly, the major change is that he advocates an extra layer of 6 oz cloth on both the inside and outside of the hull. The inside is particularly important for strength, since hitting a rock with the outside ...

If it's only 1 oz to 1 gallon, it's almost certainly polyester, not epoxy. You absolutely need to make sure you have good ventilaton, and you need to test how quickly it cures because the initiator can go bad. Most polyester resins are a lot cheaper than most epoxies. Epoxy sticks better to the wood...

One thing you need to find out about it, if it's epoxy, is what ratio of resin : hardener to use. That needs to be pretty accurate. To test if it will work for a canoe, make a panel about 1' square by gluing strips edge to edge, sand it smooth, cover it with glass cloth, and apply your epoxy. See wh...

A scraper can work well, but generally better for hardwood than softwood like cedar. On hardwood, there would be no need to sand, unless you want to rough up the smooth surface. I have found that some cedar scrapes OK, but other cedar leaves a lousy surface with the same scraper and angle. I used ca...

In a woodstrip/fiberglass/epoxy canoe the wood is encapsulated, protecting it from moisture so the only significant difference between plainsawn and quartersawn is the way it looks. If a board lying flat on a table has growth rings mostly sideways, we call it plainsawn, and strips cut from this boar...

The Minnesota Canoe Association 18' BWCA cruiser would work well. http://www.canoe-kayak.org/pages/plans.html It has no problem with 3 adults and gear for a longer trip, so should handle two adults and two kids easily. The 17' Northwest Cruiser may also be a good bet. http://www.northwestcanoe.com/s...

I have used even harder hard maple as an accent strip. You do need to be alert to the possibility that sanding will take down the cedar much faster than the harder wood, and make sure to use a light touch and a hard sandpaper backer. But the best way to controllably fair the maple turned out to be t...

I made a canoe on a strongback made of 2x6 (or was it 2x8?) in 1970 or so, and a couple more canoes this century on a plywood strongback. Both worked fine, but these days it's a lot harder to find straight construction lumber that won't warp. All you are asking of the strongback is that it be stable...

One of the wonderful features of this method of canoe building is that you can fix almost anything. You can certainly add more epoxy to the low areas, preferably as you say, after scuffing the surface a bit with sandpaper. The bubble can be handled several ways. One is to inject epoxy behind it, tho...

Go ahead and use pine. Canoes have been made of a large variety of species, certainly including pines. Cedar is very lightweight, and at least in the US and Canada, readily available. The ability of cedar to resist rot is not so important when the wood is encased in epoxy. You might want to consider...