Because the Peterborough has a somewhat abrupt rise at the stems, it is necessary to steam the ends of the gunwales and clamp them to a form. The same form can be used to do both ends of the gunwales on different days. To summarize, the decks, inner and outer stems, coamings, and gunwales must be steam bent on the Peterborough model of canoe.

I made accent strips of alternating basswood and black walnut battens. At the time, I had no bead and cove router bits, so it was necessary to remove one cove from a western red cedar strip, and one bead as I finished the sheer area. So even if you buy pre-milled strips, it is still a good idea to have your own bead and cove router bits.

I made a hard maple carved carrying yoke for longer portages; and I also made a slender ash thwart for use on most day trips. They can be interchanged by removing only two nuts and washers. Once again I found some straight-grained white ash, and carved two paddles that matched the ash gunwales.

The keel goes on after the hull has been fiberglassed. I used a unique method to attach the keel that I liked enough to explain here. I struck two chalk lines along the canoe hull on the outer hull. Then I placed the keel on the hull bottom. I drilled 1/8-inch holes through the keel and the bottom of the boat, and used screws and washers fastened from the inside of the boat. Then I dipped 1/8 x 1-inch dowels in epoxy and plugged all the drilled holes from the keel side of the boat. Next day I trimmed the dowels off and sanded them flush with the keel.

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So, you want to build a cedar-strip canoe, and cover it with fiberglas cloth inside and out coated with WEST System epoxy. May I suggest a very good way to begin. At least this is how I began: I bought a copy of Canoecraft from the Bear Mountain Boat Shop, P.O. Box 191, Peterborough, Ontario, Canada, K9J6Y3. phone: 877-392-8880. They are on the internet. I bought my copy in 1992. It had plans for about seven different canoes; but it was updated in 2001 and now has plans for about 20 canoes. There are other stripper books out there but I have not used any others. I was contracted to build the Peterborough by a company in Michigan.

The folks at Bear Mountain sell complete building kits for around two thousand dollars. That probably sounds like a lot, but the finished canoe should be worth more than five thousand dollars. You can also buy full-size station mold drawings, or even buy full-size station molds already cut to exact size. The kits come with western red cedar strips, already dressed with bead and cove edges (the only way to build in my opinion), ash gunwale stock, ash thwart stock, cane-filled seat frames, deck lumber, stem stock, etc.. I can’t go into the detail that the book does, so just let me say, get the book! And while you’re at it, order the video (it might be a DVD now) on the step-by-step building process.

If you have a good source of western red cedar, or northern white, eastern white, Alaska white or Port Orford cedar, or Sitka or white spruce; then you can mill your own strips 3/4 x1/4-inch by a foot longer than your canoe. Or you can use shorter lengths if you stagger the butt joints and also land them on station molds. The bead and cove joints will help to keep the strips in alignment. However, you will need to get bead and cove router bits to mill the edges of your strips. These can also be ordered from Bear Mountain. Joan Barrett, at Bear Mountain, is very patient and helpful. If you don’t have a shaper or a router, you will have to buy or borrow one. I mounted my router upside down on a home-made router table. If you don’t have room in your shop, you can wait for a nice day and take your benches and router table outside and mill all the strips at once.

Yellow carpenter glue is all you need to edge glue the strips. But first you have to build a strongback and attach station molds every foot or so.

When I built the 16-foot Peterborough, I ordered my western red cedar strips already milled with bead and cove edges from Flounder Bay, in Anacortes, Washington. I built my own station molds using the offsets in Canoecraft. And I built my own strongback, following directions from Canoecraft. There are several choices of wood for inwales and outwales (collectively they are called gunwales, or just rails). Ash inwales and cherry outwales are pretty. I used ash for inwales and outwales, but I countersunk the screws ¼-inch and plugged the holes with black walnut bungs. Looks good on the finished canoe.

You will need to build a steam box or pipe no matter which canoe design you choose, but they are easy to make, and even easier to use. I made black walnut decks for the Peterborough. I sliced the ¾-inch thick lumber into three slabs, steamed them, and bent them over a jig and left them overnight. Next day, I epoxied the three pieces together, and put them back on the jig to cure. I also cut hard maple accent strips and epoxied them down the center of the decks. Very pretty. The Peterborough has coamings at the decks, so it is necessary to make a form to hold the coamings after they come out of the steamer.

I will post the pictures of the finished canoe in Part Two

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I went to a local boat-builder who sold me a nice piece of fiberglas cloth and some polyester resin and hardener. I tacked the stems together against two de-barked willow branches cut from a tree in my backyard.

Then I covered the hull with fiberglas cloth and painted on the resin and hardener mixture, working as rapidly as possible. After the glass had partially cured, I trimmed it along the sheer with a sharp blade.

The following day I took the canoe off the form. I purposely left the stems plumb so it would come off. Then I carved an oak center thwart to the right length (about 35-inches if my memory serves) and wedged it in temporarily to help hold the right shape. I cut inwales and outwales from 2×4 stock and screwed outwale, planking, ribs, and inwale all together at the sheer (no steaming needed). I trimmed the ends of all the ribs and sanded the top of the gunwales smooth. I made decks of poplar (all I had), and sunk some 2-inch screws from the outside of the gunwales to fasten the decks. I used fiberglas cloth to attach seat supports fore and aft. After it cured I made two seats of 8-inch wide cedar and screwed them onto the seat supports. I permanently attached the center thwart with two 3/16 carriage bolts. I used glass strips to fiberglas on a full-length keel, ripped from a 2×4.

Then I painted it with green enamel on the outside. My wife talked me into varnishing the interior. I think I used a quart of Helmsman spar varnish there.

The finished canoe didn’t leak, although it weighed close to 100 pounds. It paddled fairly well, and we got a fair amount of use out of it. But when I took a job repairing wooden boats at Wesley Marine in Montague, Michigan, I had to leave the canoe with my son’s friend in Crystal Lake. He probably still has it.

But not to worry, I have built a 12-foot nipper sailboat, 12-foot kayak, 14-foot rowboat, 16-foot Peterborough stripper canoe, 19-foot canoe and recently restored the 16-foot Old Town (which I plan to keep). All my other boats were sold or given to friends.

Here is a picture of the 19-foot plywood canoe.

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Back in 1983, I took my ten year old son to the Boundary Waters near Ely, Minnesota. I had no canoe, but a good friend from my church let us use his 16-foot Coleman canoe. It had a padded portage yolk, but I only used it to get to Sailor Lake from Moose Lake, and then to a third lake whose name escapes me. We brought along an old twelve foot by thirteen foot canvas tent, which was too heavy for back-packing on portages. So we needed to return to our base camp on Moose Lake everyday. We stayed at Don Beland’s resort, outfitter, and campground. Good fishing everyday from our canoe.

We went to Church in Ely on Sunday morning, and on the way back to camp my son, Bob, saw a sign “Angleworm Trail,” pointing down a footpath. He said, “let’s follow that path.” So we parked in a small lot off the road. We weren’t wearing our hiking shoes, but we gathered our two spinning rods and a small tackle box. We didn’t know where the path led, but assumed there was water along it somewhere.

So we began our hike. I think we walked three miles, maybe more. It was a beautiful warm day, and we were getting thirsty. We came to a ridge of large rocks which appeared to be green and blue from a distance. As we came closer, we realized the rocks were covered with ripe blueberry bushes. The ridge was so steep that we simply reached out in front of us and picked and ate. The blueberries were big (for wild ones), sweet and very juicy. We quenched our thirst on blueberries for maybe 15 minutes.

Then we climbed to the top of the ridge and looked down on a beautiful lake of a few thousand acres. There were no cottages or boats. No signs that humans existed anywhere, and the water was blue and clear. Bob was tired from the walk, and our first night sleeping in a tent after traveling from Crystal Lake, Illinois. He sat down against a tree to rest. I said, “Bob we just walked a long way to get to this lake, so fish!” All we had with us was some spoons and spinners, so we tied on a couple. Within a few casts Bob caught a couple of pike, and I got a nice three pound walleye. We released the pike and put the walleye on a plastic rope stringer. We only fished for a while, then decided to take the walleye back to camp. I carried the fish about halfway to the car; after which I dragged it in the sand the rest of the way. We grilled the fillets over charcoal; it was good, and we slept well that night. I don’t think that lake got much fishing pressure; I bet it’s still a good fishing lake even today.

At the end of the week we packed up and headed back to Crystal Lake. Now I wanted my own canoe!  However, we had just moved to Crystal Lake and I didn’t have any money for canoes.  I had spent most of my savings while building yachts on Martha’s Vineyard; but that’s a whole nother story. I had some long 2×4s and some strips of white oak, so I started thinking about building a stripper canoe. I asked Bill, owner of the Coleman canoe, if he would mind if I used his canoe as a form on which to build a stripper. I told him it might get scratched up some in the process. He said,”Oh, it’s already full of dents (which it was) you go right ahead, and don’t worry about a few scratches.

Well, I made a steamer with an old teakettle, about five feet of 3-inch pvc pipe, some heater hose, and a Coleman cook stove. I made 3/8-inch ribs from the oak, steamed them, then formed them over the upside-down canoe and tied the projecting ends together from gunwale to gunwale underneath. I weighted them at the keel with concrete blocks. Then I ripped the 2×4s into 3/16-inch strips, 1.5-inches wide and tacked them onto the ribs.

I will post the picture of the canoe I built in the next part of this story.

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Pros and cons of different sizes and shapes, both above and below the waterline. A “+” sign means positive and a “-” means negative.

+   Long canoes (17.5 to 20 feet long) have a shallow draft and are good for floating rivers that have shallow stretches where shorter canoes will scrape the bottom.
+   Long canoes are faster because they have a longer waterline.
+   Long canoes can carry more cargo, including passengers.
+   Long canoes will track better and are easier to paddle on a straight course.
+   Because the current is fastest at the river’s surface, long canoes will drift downstream faster than canoes that draw more water.
-    Long canoes are a little heavier when portaging than shorter canoes (14 to 16.5 feet)
-    Long canoes are a little harder to maneuver.
-    They cost a little more to build or buy.
-    If you drive a Corolla, it will look funny on the cartop carrier.

+   Wide (beamy, 35-48 inches) canoes can carry more stuff.
+   Beamy canoes don’t feel as tippy.
+   Beamy canoes are probably better to fish from.
-    Beamy canoes are slower.
-    Beamy canoes are a little heavier.

+   Straight keel canoes are faster due to the longer waterline.
+   Straight keel canoes track well on a straight course.
-    Straight keel canoes are a little harder to turn.

+   Rocker- keel canoes turn well and are good for floating fast streams.
-    They are slower.
-    They draw more water.

+   Flat bottom canoes have good initial stability.
+   They drift fast downstream.
+   They are good for running fast streams.
-    If you are on the lake when there is a brisk wind and a nice chop on the water, and you get sideways to the waves (in the troughs), the motion of the canoe will scare you and maybe dump you out.
-    A flat bottom is not as strong due to the lack of curved surfaces.

+   Shallow arch bottom canoes have good stability and are faster and stronger than flat bottom canoes.
+   Shallow arch canoes are better in rough water than flat bottom canoes.
+   Shallow arch is the best shape for a multi-use family canoe.

+   A canoe with a standard keel will track well and the bottom will be stronger.
+   A standard keel is best for the lake or slow rivers.
+   A shoe keel is good for faster streams.
-    A standard keel can catch on rocks and snags in fast water.

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•    Aluminum: Many good canoes have been made by Grumman, Coleman and other companies. But amateur canoe builders should probably avoid aluminum. Although these canoes are light-weight, they will dent, and they tend to be a little noisy when amateurs inadvertently bang their paddle shafts against the gunwales as they travel.

•    Fiberglas: Mostly made in factory moulds. Not recommended for amateur builders. They tend to be heavy, which is okay in the water, but not so hot on long portages.

•    Kevlar: Factory-built boats are strong and light-weight. They are  good boats, but expensive.

•    Wood strips, fiberglas cloth and West epoxy. A good choice for the amateur builder. A good strongback and station moulds every foot are all that’s necessary for a building form.  Because the inside and outside surfaces of the hull are coated with fiberglas and epoxy, no ribs are needed. A canoe built in this method is very strong, relatively light-weight, and the wood stays dry and strong. Probably the prettiest canoes made. If you decide to use this method, purchase a copy of Canoecraft  by Ted Moores and Merilyn Mohr; an excellent soft-cover book.

•    Wood and Canvas: An elaborate form has to be built, and then wrapped in steel straps to facilitate clinch nailing. However, once the form is built it can be used to make several canoes, or a hundred. You also need a steam box to bend ribs and gunwales; if the canoe design has a lot of rise at the stems, you may want to steam decks as well. It is not nearly as messy as building “strippers”; no glue or epoxy is used on the wood and canvas canoe. You will need a good source for northern or eastern white cedar; or western red cedar, or some of the spruces can be substituted for ribs, planking, and gunwales. These boats rival the “strippers” for looks, and in every other way. They are a little heavier, but not much. If you decide to build in wood and canvas or to restore an old wood and canvas canoe, purchase a copy of The Wood and Canvas Canoe by Jerry Stelmok and Rollin Thurlow.

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Places to get materials
Old Town canoe Co. in Old Town, Maine: #10 Midwest Duck canvas, Diamond head bolts, Filler in quarts, Marine enamel in quarts, Brass fasteners, Tacks, Caned seats, stem bands, etc.. phone 800-343-1555

Ace Hardware: Stainless steel Phillips-head screws, stainless carriage bolts, tacks, brass washers(for thwart and seat nuts)

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Open the quart of jade green marine enamel and stir thoroughly. There are many color choices; however, about 75% of the old wood and canvas canoes were green. I didn’t add any accent stripes, but you can let your imagination run here. The first coat goes on with no thinning. Succeeding coats should be thinned 10 or 20%. Three or four coats with light sanding between will give a good finish. Allow a day between each coat.

Oh yes. Put a coat on the center thwart. (You varnished the center thwart? Good too).

Re-attach the brass stem bands. Note how they run onto the keel ends. This is one place where oval-head brass screws go well. I painted the stem bands up to the decks.

You need paddles. Sure you could buy some, but would they match your canoe? I took some six foot ash boards that were 9 inches wide and 2 inches thick and measured the distance from the floor to my chin for the first one’s length. I had a couple old wooden paddles to use as a guide to draw the outline on the board’s surface.  I cut the outlines of two paddles on the bandsaw, one a little shorter than chin height. Then I shaped them with a draw knife, then a spoke shave, and finally a good sanding.

I stained the paddles to match the gunwales. Then I treated the hand grips with boiled linseed oil. Then I removed the masking tape I put around the shaft below the grips and varnished the rest of the paddles. You can see them in the canoe. However, I removed the center thwart to paint it green so it is not in the picture.

Here is the link to the full size picture.

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Now it’s time to open a quart of filler (I purchased 4 quarts). The filler is a proprietary mixture of powdered silica, linseed oil, petroleum distillates and other secret stuff. The filler must be mixed thoroughly with a stir-stick before use. Doing a 3 foot x 3 foot section at a time with a stiff-bristled brush, I used a canvas mitt (one was included free with my order) to rub the filler into the canvas weave until it was smooth, then I moved to a new section. This was repeated until the entire hull was completely smooth with no canvas weave visible.  Special attention was given to fill the overlapped seams at the stems. Now you must wait 3 or 4 weeks for the filler to dry until you can’t easily scratch it with a fingernail. While you are waiting, carve a center carrying thwart. I made mine from ash for light weight and strength, which I later painted same color as the hull.  I ordered two diamond-headed bolts from Old Town for the center thwart. All the other brass bolts were still in fine shape.

When the filler is cured it needs a light sanding with 150 grit. Now is a good time to attach the outwales which were made earlier. You need a lot of C-clamps when attaching inwales and outwales. If you are a purist you will reuse all the brass screws you removed from the boat. I don’t particularly like slot-headed screws, and I have a tendency to twist off the occasional brass screw. So I bought Phillips-head stainless steel screws in the same sizes as the ones that were in the original boat; except for the screws that ran into the decks. I made the decks about ¼ inch proud of the sheer, so I drove some two-inchers through the outwales, planking, ribs, inwales and into the decks. The outwales were fastened at every other rib from stem to stern. All screws were countersunk  1/8 inch below the gunwales.

The inwales, rib ends, and gunwales were brought even with a belt sander. Sand paper and a wood block would work too, but take a lot longer.  The decks, thwarts, and gunwales were sanded with 150 grit. I used a dark stain on the gunwales and the rib ends to bring out the beauty in the grain and to preserve the wood. Thwarts and deck are still bare wood.

All the cane was removed from the ash seat frames; they were hand sanded and new seats were woven with ¾ inch wide oak wicker. These were held in place with thin wood strips tacked under the seat frames. I varnished the seat frames and wooden dowels they hang from; the oak wicker also got a coat of varnish.

After final sanding on rails, quarter-thwarts, and decks, I varnished all the surfaces about 3 or 4 coats of spar varnish; light sanding between coats.

Here is a link to the full size picture.

Next: Part 5

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For the purist, the varnish should be stripped from the inside of the canoe ribs and planking; a good sanding and vacuuming to be followed by several coats of Helmsman or similar quality spar varnish. However, using liquid stripper is a smelly, messy job at best. So I sanded the interior with 120 grit and steel wool, vacuumed it thoroughly, and painted with a quality porch and deck paint in Bavarian Oak (sort of a milk chocolate hue). Much easier to paint when the seat frames are not in the boat.

I forgot to mention, if there are any broken ribs, the tacks must be carefully removed and new cedar ribs traced from the old using white cedar. A steam box must be used to make the new ribs pliable before they are bent into the canoe and clinch–nailed with brass or copper tacks. I found two cracked ribs in the 1956 Old Town, but I couldn’t locate any white cedar in Kansas City; so I made some tapered scabs out of the mahogany offcuts that were left over, glued them over the cracks with Tite Bond, and weighted them with trailer balls and other heavy stuff overnight. After the glue sets they can be clinch-nailed with long tacks.

I neglected to mention that I noted the locations of the tacks along the sheer when I removed them. There were some longer steel ones through planking and ribs, and into the inwales; and there were shorter brass tacks through the canvas, planking and ribs. These were carefully pulled and saved for reuse. I had to buy 100 new tacks to replace those that broke when I removed them. I also marked the locations of seat frames and quarter thwarts on the boat with a pencil.

Now I turned the upright canoe over and put it on the saw-horses. I hand-sanded the planking with 100 grit, removing some of the filler which still remained, and prepared the surface for the new canvas. The planking was very dry from years of hanging inside, so I laid on a good coat of boiled linseed over the exterior hull.The canvas is #10 Midwest Duck. I ordered 20 feet of it 5 feet wide in one piece. I folded it to be 2.5 feet by 20 feet, and clamped the ends with four 3 foot 2×4s, held together with C-clamps and carriage bolts to form an envelope. I used chains and straps and ratchets to stretch the canvas between two poles in my pole barn. Two eyebolts were screwed into the poles about 20 inches off the floor. It needs to be stretched until you can hear a low-pitched twang when you pluck it. The envelope is loosened enough to slip it over the upside down canoe, then retightened to its former tension. Starting amidships, I used the “Joe Seliga” method to stretch and tack the canvas at the gunwales. At the stems the canvas must be slit, overlapped and trimmed. The seam formed should be sealed with dolfinite and double-tacked. Tack one side first and trim. Then overlap the other side, tack and trim  Drive short brass tacks directly into the stems. Be sure to stretch the canvas during the whole procedure to prevent wrinkles.

Here is a link to the full size picture.

Click HERE for all the articles in the Old Town Yankee Restoration series.

Next: Part Four

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