Building the Mattawa - a small tandem canoe

[ScottE]

Back in November I was building myself a Northwest Passage Solo http://www.bearmountainboats.com/phpBB3 ... f=1&t=4392 and that got my girlfriend interested in building herself a boat. We spent the requisite amount of time torturing ourselves over what design to build and finally settled on the Mattawa which is a John Winters boat. We ended up modifying the design by putting in a chined tumblehome so that it would be easier to paddle solo. She wanted a tandem (that she would mostly be paddling solo) but wanted it to be light enough for her to carry. The Mattawa is 15'-6" and an asymmetric hull. We built it with 6 oz cloth on the outside and 3 oz on the inside to save weight. To be sure that we didn't get any oil canning we lapped the 3 oz in the middle of the boat. We also went with a one piece, dado'd gunnel that was on the small side. In the end the boat came in at 47 pounds. If you're interested in seeing lots of photos of the build you could take a look here. http://customfurniture.us/index.php/fur ... ndem-canoe

[Jim Dodd]

Thanks for the post !
It's always great to see builds , especially when they incorporate new ideas !
I'm guessing you attached the seats to blocks glued to the hull.
Did you bead and cove your strips ?
Did you encounter any problems with sanding or glassing the shouldered tumblehome ?

Thanks again for the post !

Jim

[Rabbit]

nice looking boat!

reading the build page, the requirements your gf had were the same as mine, with the addition that i wanted to fish out of it. my answer was the bobs special. the width issue was less of a problem because, being symmetrical, sitting in the front seat facing backward meant it was narrower any way.

the concave tublehome looks interesting. the staining worked out well. i must admit when i first started my build i was thinking about clearing the outer hull with candy apple red. but resisted.

does it paddle the way she wanted?

[ScottE]

Thanks for the post !
I'm guessing you attached the seats to blocks glued to the hull.
Did you bead and cove your strips ?
Did you encounter any problems with sanding or glassing the shouldered tumblehome ?

Thanks again for the post !

Jim

The seats are attached to blocks glued to the hull. I feel like thats a good way to stiffen the boat and that it allows you to loose the thwarts (and their weight). Even with the small (5/8" x 1 1/8") gunnel, the boat is very stiff. I did the same thing on my solo which has a much longer span between stiffeners (one seat, no thwarts in a 15' boat) and it is fine as well.

We did cove and bead the strips. On my first boat I used square strips and hand planed the rolling bevels. That went reasonably fast, but with the C&B you can really move along. You save way more time in the stripping than you spend doing the C&B. I made a little jig for 2 routers that cut the cove and the bead at the same time as you ran the strip through it. I have a power feed that made that process really slick but you could certainly feed it by hand. It took about an hour to rip the strips on the table saw (nice long out feed table), an hour to make the Cove&Bead-o-matic, and an hour to run the C&B.

I knew that if we made the chine on the tumblehome really crisp we were going to have trouble getting the glass to bend around that corner so we sanded an intermediate bevel on the forms where the side met the chine and put a 1/2" strip there. That allowed us to sand a nice radius on the chine without making the strip too thin. We did the same thing where the tumblehome met the vertical gunnel strip. It worked great and the glass went on without any problems.

Glad you liked the blog post.

[ScottE]

nice looking boat!

reading the build page, the requirements your gf had were the same as mine, with the addition that i wanted to fish out of it. my answer was the bobs special. the width issue was less of a problem because, being symmetrical, sitting in the front seat facing backward meant it was narrower any way.

the concave tublehome looks interesting. the staining worked out well. i must admit when i first started my build i was thinking about clearing the outer hull with candy apple red. but resisted.

does it paddle the way she wanted?

It paddles great. I have a Bell Yellowstone that is nominally the same boat (15.5' x 33" waterline) . It is Royalex and is great for the rocky whitewater we have here in NM. It also weighs about 15 pounds more than her Mattawa. The difference in acceleration is amazing. The Mattawa jumps forward more like my tiny solo than the Yellowstone. The Mattawa really feels like a sports car, like my solo, but when you lean it it's solid as a rock (unlike the solo). It turns on a dime and tracks really well if you tell it to. Really nice boat. We looked at the Bob's, how do you like it? How much did it end up weighing?

[Rabbit]

Really nice boat. We looked at the Bob's, how do you like it? How much did it end up weighing?

i still need to put the final coats of clear on the outer hull so i have no idea how it handles. as for weight, i'm guessing a kg or two heavier than the mattawa. the strips, inner and outer stems glassed inside and out came out at 14kg... i was hoping for 10. i'm not a particularly strong person, but completed minus the urethane on the outer hull, i can hold it over my head the way you were holding the mattawa's hull up after the outside had been glassed. for fear of hijaking your thread i wont go into detail here, but there are build posts posted. the most recent would be "spinters, the story so far" and the repair sticky at the top of this section of this forum. i'll post a final thread in a couple of weeks with weights, final pics and a run down of the materials.

it's a shame you are on the other side of the planet, it would be interesting to compare how the two boats perform.

[ScottE]

It is a shame we can't get together and compare. That would be fun.