Stripe in deck pattern

[Chris]

Hi there,
just glued the inner ginwales today - going for the decks now. Here comes my question: On a few pages I found a light strip in a darker wood as design for the decks (looks like a line, which cuts a triangle into 2 halfs, hope you know what I mean :smile ) . Am I right, that there is only a small strip of lighter wood is glued with epoxy, or is there a special trick, which I can`t see on the ready deck?

best regards

Chris

[Glen Smith]

I used a tapered piece of ash to separate the two pieces of walnut on my decks.

[Patricks Dad]

Glen, your deck looks alot like a design Patrick came up with recently - including using walnut (he's added a couple bells and whistles but yours looks awesome!). I see you terminated your inwales at the deck rather than tapering them along side the deck.

Pros and con's of the two approaches?

[Glen Smith]

Ahem, my shortened inwales are a result of breaking the end of one while trying to install them after steaming. :embarassed With all the work that went into making the inwales, I preferred to make new decks rather than new inwales. I didn't like my original Zebrano decks anyway. I don't have a photo of it but my decks have hand-holds under them. I drilled a few shallow holes with a large forstner bit near the inboard end, chiseled out the excess wood between the holes then went at them with a small sanding drum chucked in the drill. When you pick up the canoe by the decks, your hands automatically find a comfortable carrying position.

[Patricks Dad]

Excellent recovery on the broken inwale! it looks great (I'll keep that in mind when we install our inwales (my dad used to say that "anyone can screw something up but it takes a good carpenter to hide it").

We've been thinking about the "comfortable hand hold" aspect for our decks as well. Patrick has come up with an idea for a steam bent cherry arch under the deck matching the arch on the deck with a wedge of cherry similar to your ash wedge.

Any thoughts on how tight of a radius we could bend cherry? We're using left over cherry strips (3/4" X 1/4") from our stem work. My thought was to stack up 4 pieces and bend until 1 of them breaks and use the remaining 3 (Unless we get to a radius that is clearly small enough before a failure of course).

[Glen Smith]

This link: http://www.megspace.com/lifestyles/njmarine/Steam.html says that cherry can be bent to a 6" radius. True or false?

A question about your avatar, are you looking through a doorknob hole?

[Glen Smith]

The 6" radius for cherry concurs with what I found through the Lee Valley website.
Species Smallest Radii
Oak (red and white) 2"
Hickory 2"
Elm 2"
Walnut 3"
Ash 4.5"
Cherry* 6"
Maple** 8"

* Requires some experience to bend flawlessly. It is prone to compression wrinkles on the inside face. These can often be removed during shaping and sanding once the bend is complete and cured.

[Patricks Dad]

Thanks for the research (as usual). I did a couple drawings this afternoon to see what various radii would look like. 6" is kind of wide for what we're looking for. I'll try to push the limits to see what happens. If it fails, I'm sure Patrick will come up with something else. He's just about to get his drivers license. Who know's what will happen after that. He also has plans in place for an electric violin he wants to build next... How does he have time for school??

The Avatar is a picture Patrick took just after we bent our stems. I was looking over the stems to see if they were aligned and all clamped in place when he snapped the photo from the other side of the stem mold...

Thanks again.

[Patricks Dad]

Getting back to Chris' original question on decks.... the Canoecraft book recommends inserting a spline between 2 pieces of deck in circumstances where the short grain in the deck pieces meet end-to-end (leaving the long grain to follow the inwales for a good joint there).

Our plan was to install a spline in our decks but thinking about it, it would seem that if you saturated the end grain well with unthickened epoxy you ought to be able to avoid the spline (or even put short grain against the gunwale?)

Thoughts?

[Erik, Belgium]

Glue the deck pieces first, anything can be done here with colors or sorts of wood.
With the glued decks on both my canoes, I reinforced the underside of the decks:
- 1st I laid a 6oz glass cloth on the underside
- 2nd I put a small piece of wood from left to right (1/2" thick), that will prevent all the force on the deck gluelines, in case someone wood lift the canoe when loaden. This piece of wood acts like a gripbar as well

Erik, Belgium

[Juneaudave]

You know...I did the deck on my Bob's with a solid deck.

The Rice Lake that I am working on now has cambered deck beams covered with leftover 1/4 thick strips...don't have any pics yet...but I'm thinking the cambered beams have some advantages in terms of weight, maybe creativity and cost....Juneaudave

[Chris]

Hello,

there`s really some interresting stuff in your answers about my question. I made and installed the decks today, I choosed nut (It`s maybe european walnut I think) and glued in a small strip from ash, like I saw it at Glen, Eric and some others. I read about the spline in canoecraft as well Randy, but I used it not, because a found it more difficult to combinde that with the ash strip. I think next I will have to do some bending for the "hnaging system" of the bow slider seat. I`m inspired by the photo of Green Valley, were the slider hangers a build like a bendet stem. I thing I will build something like a mold to make this. Some planing and sanding is needed for the thwart and the joke, and afterwards I will start another happy sanding time .

I will upload a few pics from today on my homepage in a few minutes.

Best regards and thanks again

Chris








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[Glen Smith]

Nice job on the decks, Chris.