17' 9" Freedom

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Ben
Posts: 69
Joined: Wed Jul 08, 2009 11:51 pm

Post by Ben »

Dave,
Pretty much. I started at the shear in the middle, and found a fair curve out in each direction. It probably ended up within 1/2" of being parallel with the waterline. It worked out very well. Here is a picture from my inside glassing from this morning.

Image
Ben
Posts: 69
Joined: Wed Jul 08, 2009 11:51 pm

Post by Ben »

Here is the finished boat. I was hoping to get it in the water on Saturday, but it looks like thunderstorms on the horizon. Maybe next week.

Image
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Snowman
Posts: 233
Joined: Tue Jan 25, 2005 6:21 pm
Location: Gatineau, QC

Post by Snowman »

Ben,

Looks great - congratluations!

PS - I hope that you can get her out that door and up the stairs - looks like a basement?
Snowman back East
Ben
Posts: 69
Joined: Wed Jul 08, 2009 11:51 pm

Post by Ben »

Thanks! Luckily it is a walk-out basement, and I made sure I would have room when I finished off my shop area.
Snowman
Posts: 233
Joined: Tue Jan 25, 2005 6:21 pm
Location: Gatineau, QC

Post by Snowman »

I did the exact same ting in the last house we built. It worked out nice and the house had everything I wanted. I miss it :sad

Enjoy!


Snowman
Snowman back East
Ben
Posts: 69
Joined: Wed Jul 08, 2009 11:51 pm

Post by Ben »

I finally got her out of the basement today and out for a test paddle. Sorry, no pics. It was just me and my 13 year old daughter and I didn't want to solo.

The good points? She paddled beautifully! She tracked straight and glided well. My daughter and I paddled a couple of sprints at the end and she is fast enough for me. Plenty stable, too!

The bad points? The sun sure brings out imperfections in the hull. You may have read my US Composites/Epifanes rant a while back. The spots where I coiuldn't get the blush off are noticable in the sunlight. I will have to sand it down and refinish it this winter. I am sure that a couple of BWCA trips this year will make me want to refinish her anyway. Believe it or not, I now wish I would have stretched her to 18 1/2' or more.

Questionable? I still don't know how much she weighs. I weigh about 240, and my old scale reads to 270. We bought a new digital scale that reads to 440, but I can't hold still enough with the canoe on my shoulders to get the scale to read. I will have to work out a system to weigh just the boat. I have no problem picking her up and putting her on my shoulders, though. It seems to be jjust a bit heavier than the MN2 I was tripping with last summer. Maybe 55 to 60#? Definitely not the 70-80# of an aluminium.

Lastly, the name? I decided to name her "Saratoga." If you have ever spent time in Duluth, you know why. All in all I am happy with the build. This is going to be a good boat for my BWCA trips, but I need to focus on the next one. She is a lot of boat for 2 paddlers fishing, unloaded, and definitely too big to solo. I am thinking either a solo, smaller tandem, or kayak next.
Traveler
Posts: 12
Joined: Wed Dec 18, 2019 6:55 pm

Re: 17' 9" Freedom

Post by Traveler »

​Not going to be a proper build thread, but since I have taken my efforts at a tandem tripper pretty well as far as my unheated garage will let me, I thought I would share a few things about it.

The canoe is a Freedom 17’9” from Bear Mountain, shortened to about 17’4” to give me a little more maneuvering room to build in my garage.

I am more concerned with durability than weight, but still want to keep the weight down where it can safely be done on a boat this size. I used 3/16 strips above the waterline and 1/4 inch below to head-off possible oil-canning. The design calls for stems, but I opted to go without them for a little bit of weight savings and to reduce complexity.

The strips are a mix of Western Red and Eastern White cedar, a few 12 and 16 foot lengths but most are 8 feet or less, so lots of butt joints, and no fancy strip pattern. I will be painting the exterior hull and leaving the interior clear. First time cutting and using bead and cove - extra prep work for sure, but well worth it once I got to finally put things together.

I didn’t take any photos of the form set-up etc., or first bunch of strips - nothing different than for other builds. As is visible in some of the photos below, I had to add a foot-long “shelf” on each end of my strong back to accommodate the extra length (the strong back was originally built to adjust for builds from 13 to 16 feet, as at the time I couldn’t see any reason why I would ever want to build something longer than that).

Started strips at the centre sheer line, letting the first strip find its own positioning towards the ends, and went from there. The transition from 3/16 to 1/4 inch strips was done without drama at the waterline on the middle forms, and since the waterline is not parallel with the sheer the first couple of 1/4 inch strips wound up above the waterline as they moved away from the centre. I used a cold tolerant glue (Lepage express) as most of the time I was putting this together the temperature was below 10 Celsius.

Once I got past the stems I kind of accidentally cut the first of the flat-laying strips to fit a herringbone bottom pattern, and decided to just go with it. I did the centreline overlap and cut thing on my last build and didn’t find it that bad, but was happy to try something different. As I got closer to finishing off the football I was getting a little worried about whether there is a special way to close up a herringbone pattern. After many fruitless internet searches I decided to just keep going and deal with it when I got there, and wound up with an easily filled, single-wide whiskey strip gap.
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After about a half hour of fussing with a plane and the sanding strip to get the end bevels right, it went in surprisingly easily.

After the staples were pulled I moved to roughing out the stems with my trusty Japanese saw and (gasp) belt sander.
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Did a rough sanding with 60 grit today and here she sits until things warm up in a few months - hope to get a mild day or two so I can fill any gaps and dings with thickened epoxy before final sanding with something like 120 grit. But any further real work will have to wait until April probably.
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My layup plan is 6 ounce S glass on the outside, with a 4 ounce S glass football. I have enough 6 ounce S glass for the interior as well, but thinking that might be overkill and may go with E glass instead. Unfortunately, I have lots of time to think about all the permutations and combinations that are possible.

But I’ll still keep busy in my toasty warm basement. I bought a bunch of carbon and fibreglass sleeve and will be trying to develop my mediocre skills to experiment on carbon over foam or cedar gunnels, thwarts and maybe seat frames for this canoe to see what I can reasonably pull-off to keep weight down, while maintaining a strong boat.

Thanks all, and stay safe

Tony


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Patricks Dad
Posts: 1476
Joined: Wed Oct 13, 2004 1:11 pm
Location: Warrenville, Illinois

Re: 17' 9" Freedom

Post by Patricks Dad »

The last boat I built (Freedom 17 - made with Kevlar, Carbon and Inegra), was made with carbon fiber over foam for gunwales, seats, yoke and thwarts. You can take a look at pictures of the process here:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set ... 885&type=3

It came in at 39 pounds. The hull of course wasn't wood but the component weights were as follows:

Component Weight Cumulative
Hull 17.4 17.4
Core 3.95 21.35 - this should have been lighter
Inside layer 9.5 30.85 - this too.
Gunwales 2.9 33.75
Seats 1.97 35.72
Yoke 1.63 37.35
Varnish 1.71 39.06

I'd be very interested in what you come up with.

Enjoy your build.
Randy Pfeifer
(847) 341-0618
Randy.Pfeifer1@gmail.com
Traveler
Posts: 12
Joined: Wed Dec 18, 2019 6:55 pm

Re: 17' 9" Freedom

Post by Traveler »

Thanks for the photo link Randy. I read your build thread here but could not get any of the photos to display, which was frustrating. Your work looks great - I especially like the seats, but the canoe overall is pretty impressive. I will probably have a few questions for you as I get into this. Thanks again

Tony
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Patricks Dad
Posts: 1476
Joined: Wed Oct 13, 2004 1:11 pm
Location: Warrenville, Illinois

Re: 17' 9" Freedom

Post by Patricks Dad »

Yeah, I'm not sure what happened to all the pictures in that original thread.... so I moved them all into an album and posted that link. Hope that has some longevity...

Happy to discuss questions as you go along.
Randy Pfeifer
(847) 341-0618
Randy.Pfeifer1@gmail.com
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Jim Dodd
Posts: 1359
Joined: Wed Feb 08, 2006 11:08 pm
Location: Iowa

Re: 17' 9" Freedom

Post by Jim Dodd »

Good lay up plan. S-glass is more expensive, but a great option with a thin stripped hull !

That is what I'd go with. I'm more about durability.

Jim
Keep your paddle wet and your seat dry!
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Jim Dodd
Posts: 1359
Joined: Wed Feb 08, 2006 11:08 pm
Location: Iowa

Re: 17' 9" Freedom

Post by Jim Dodd »

Sanding ! I love a ROS sander, but it leaves swirl marks. I always hand sand with the grain, using 120grit..

I don't know how many times I've thought I did a great job sanding, then those pesky swirl marks show up !

Yeah it's hard to wait the Winter out to finish a build !

Good Luck !


Jim
Keep your paddle wet and your seat dry!
Traveler
Posts: 12
Joined: Wed Dec 18, 2019 6:55 pm

Re: 17' 9" Freedom

Post by Traveler »

And this one is done, after much delay. Didn’t take many photos along the way, as opportunities to work on it were always unpredictable so I just put my head down and pushed forward as fast as possible on each step before having to take a break for other things. Used s-glass all the way, with 1/4 inch cedar below the waterline and 3/16 above. The exterior has a football of four ounce buried under a layer of six ounce, while the inside has a single six ounce layer. With 3 additional layers at the stems if should be a pretty strong hull overall.

Interlux Brightsides Fire Red on the exterior - 3 coats over a coat of their grey primer for good coverage of the strip pattern and giant dents around the staple marks - not my first choice in paint colour but building this for my daughter and her boyfriend, who were pretty emphatic that it should be red.

I originally intended to try a few things like carbon over foam for the gunnels and seats, but found through a few rudimentary experiments that at least in my unskilled hands the weight reductions were not that great with hand layups, compared to the effort and cost required. So I decided to go with wood instead.

The gunnel is cherry - one piece, scarfed from a 10 foot board I had, and cut 7/8 wide by 3/4 high. Once the slot was cut on my table saw to fit over the sheer they came out to a little over 2 pounds each side, before about 8 ounces each of thickened epoxy to attach them. Wish I could say I took the time to make the seats and yoke myself, but it is freaking August and I wanted this done and on the water before the fall, so I bought all the fittings from Trailhead Paddleshack here in Ottawa. Webbed seats, fancy deep dish yoke, thwart, and two handles, all in cherry, came in a 6.5 pounds overall once all the trimming was done (which I actually found to be surprisingly light). In total, the canoe tops out at 55 pounds all in, about 5 pounds more than I had hoped for but still not bad for a 35 inch beam, 14.5 inch deep canoe that is approaching 18 feet long. Here is a link to some photos (not sure this will work)

Has not touched water yet - likely in the next week or so. To my mind this is a very large canoe (not my personal cup of tea), but it should be stable and strong, and able to carry a ridiculously heavy load, which suits the kind of tripping my kids and their significant others like to do. Happy to answer any questions, but overall this was a very straightforward build, even for a relative novice like me. All the best

Tony

https://imgur.com/dydmnH9
https://imgur.com/V5OMgui
https://imgur.com/tI2nopq
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