The Trim, Part II

It might be taking a little longer than I originally thought it would, but bit by bit the canoe is nearing completion. In the last three weekends Tracy and I put on the final coat of epoxy on the inside of the hull. It looks pretty good, with just a bit of the fibreglass weave providing a pebbled surface for some traction. I think I finally got my squeegee technique down on the last coat and it won't need any real sanding before applying the varnish.

I spent quite a bit of time planing the tapers into the inwales and cutting and fitting them to length to fit precisely in the boat. Yesterday and today I epoxied them on with Tracy's help. As with most things on the boat, it worked out pretty well with only a couple minor problems that probably only I will notice. I bought three more clamps on Saturday morning before I put the starboard gunwale on, but found I could have used even more to get the inwale on as snug as possible. I ended up using a couple homemade clamps to get the job done and today I went out and bought 4 more clamps before putting on the port side. It's true that you can never have too many clamps. I'll put in some 1/2" stainless screws for extra strength too before I put on the outwales.

Fibreglass

Ever since I started building the canoe in my half of the garage, dust, cobwebs, termite droppings and debris have been falling from the ceiling onto it. Up until now it hasn't been a problem because I just wipe it away and continue on, but for the fibreglass and epoxy step debris falling from the ceiling won't do. So I spent most of the day Saturday cleaning out the garage literally from top to bottom. I don't think it's ever been cleaned since it was built in the 1930's. I took the shop vac to the ceiling, framing and roof joists and just about everything else above canoe level. Afterward I was still worried about stuff falling from above so I tacked plastic sheeting to the beams above the canoe.

On Sunday, I got all my supplies ready - resin and hardener, paint brushes, plastic squeegee, mixing pots, disposable gloves, mixing containers, face masks, etc. and recruited Tracy to be my Chief Mixer. The 6 oz. fibreglass sheet was unrolled directly on to the canoe. It is actually quite delicate and any pulling, tugging or touching can quickly deform the natural weave of the fibres. We carefully laid it out and there didn't seem to be any major creases, which made me happy. With Tracy mixing the resin and hardener for me and cleaning my brushes and containers all I had to worry about was getting the resin onto the boat - just enough for the 'glass and wood to soak it up without drying out, but not too much that it pooled and dripped. Tracy also kept track of timing and where I was on the hull so that I could return to a previously applied area after 30 minutes to squeegee off the excess epoxy. I certainly couldn't have done this alone. At first we were working on a 20 minute interval as recommended by the book and I was finding it hard to keep up with the schedule, barely finishing applying the resin to one section before having to go back to squeegee a previous. Since the weather was fairly cool though, the epoxy was not curing very quickly and I found after the first couple sections that 30 minutes worked out better.

All in all the process went fairly well. There are no major bubbles, dry spots, cracks or runs in the 'glass. There are quite a few drips that formed even after I squeegeed that I will have to sand off before the next coat, but that is probably the worst of it. Before I put on the next two coats I think I will apply a couple extra strips of fibreglass fabric to the bow and stern for extra strength and durability in those locations.

Oh yeah, and I chose a name for the canoe. You can see it (upside down for now) in a couple of the pictures.

From boards to a boat

I've been working on building this canoe for almost 10 months and up until now I feel like I have just been putting the pieces together in the shape of a boat. In the last two weekends though I have started to turn the collection of wood strips into a real craft with flowing lines that will actually someday grace the water. Last weekend I shaped the rough-cut outer stems into the aerodynamic leading and trailing edges of the canoe. It was some of the hardest work so far as it was a lot harder to use the spokeshave on the cherry hardwood than it was for the softer cypress and I had to be careful as I blended the stems into the hull not to damage to the edges of the cedar strips. Then, this weekend I completed the tedious, but gratifying task of pulling all of the staples - about 700 of them. I was just slightly worried that this step would result in the boat springing apart, but that did not happen. With that done I pulled out the block plane and shaved off all of the rough corners on the canoe where the edges of each strip come together with it's neighbours. It left a mountain of cedar shavings on the floor. While the hull is still rough it looks better already with the rounded edges. Next step will be to fill in the narrow gaps between some of the strips with colour-matched epoxy. The strips come together pretty tightly over much of the hull but there are some fair-sized gaps that need to be filled where the strips turn around the bilge amidship. I tested out the random orbit sander with 80-grit paper on the first two stations on one side to collect some cedar dust to mix with the epoxy.

Exterior Stems

Finally done with the strips, I have been fitting the exterior stems over the past couple weekends. I had steam bent these pieces out of cherry at the same time as the inner stems back in March or so and they've been waiting for me since then.
First task was to cut the stems rougly to length, then taper the keel-side end slightly so that it would not be wider than the inner stem as I cut away the cedar strips to allow it to fit. Next I cut a mortice into the hull starting roughly at the point where the stems turn sharply toward the bottom of the hull and ending about an inch shy of the end of the inner stem. Going too far would result in a hole through the hull! I used a 1/8" chisel, a sharp utility knife and a narrow sanding stick for this job and constantly dry-fit the stem to make sure it fit as perfectly as possible. The tedium paid off with a pretty good fit on both ends of the hull.
Next task was to epoxy the stems on. Canoecraft recommends using no.6 screws to firmly secure the outer stems while the epoxy dries and then to remove them and fill the holes with plugs. I wasn't confident in my ability to do this skillfully and I have read about other people simply strapping the stems down instead of using screws. This has the benefit of not having to remove the screws and plug the holes. I picked up some heavy duty rubber straps from OSH and tried a dry run. The straps seemed to work pretty well holding the stems in place securely so I decided to go for it. I am slightly concerned that the straps might be too tight and squeeze out too much epoxy, but after the fact I don't think that is the case. I covered the hull with painters tape and plastic too prevent most of the epoxy from getting on the hull. Then I brushed a few layers of unthickened epoxy on the stem ends to allow them to soak it up while I mixed up another batch of epoxy thickened with microfibres to the "consistency of peanut butter". This was painted on one of the mating surfaces and the stem was strapped down. I'll have to wait till tomorrow to see how well it has worked out...

Touchdown!

The long weekend was spent finishing off all of the stripping and "closing the football" on the bottom of the boat. To fit in the last piece I planed the cove edge off of the penultimate strip and planed and sanded the final 3-piece strip down to fit into the remaining slot (after a lot of measuring and marking). Tracy was there to take a couple photos as we fit in this final piece. It fit like a glove (with a couple short fingers). I imagine this is what hammering in the last spike on the trans-Canada railroad must have felt like! I am pretty pleased with the way things look.

Actually, I am far from done. The book Canoecraft says at this stage I am only about 1/3 of the way! It seems like it must be more than that. I think maybe they don't include building the strongback. Hopefully. Still, I can't believe I've made it this far. The most common question I get from the neighbourhood stoppers-by these days is "Looks good, how long have you been working on that, when is it going to be done??" My new estimate is "some time in the Spring". It sure feels good to reach this mile stone though.

Bending the stems

With the bow and stern forms now cut out with the clamping holes I was able to go about bending the stems this past weekend. As described in Canoecraft, I set up my makeshift steamer using a 3" dia. pipe a few inches longer than the wood strips used to make the laminated stems and the electric kettle from the kitchen. There are two sets of stems - the inside stems and the outside stems. The inside stems are made up of 3 strips of 1/4" x 3/4" Port Orford Cedar. It is these that the WRC strips will be attached to at the bow and stern of the canoe. The outer stems are made of 3 strips each of 1/4" x 7/8" Cherry that seal the end of the WRC strips once they have been laid on the forms and they also provide some impact resistance for the canoe.

I soaked the strips over night to soften them up, then stuck them in the PVC pipe in the morning with nozzle of the kettle inserted in the lower end of the pipe. The top end was plugged with rags and the kettle set to boiling with the switch held on. Each set of strips were steamed for about 25 minutes then removed and quickly wrapped around the forms. While I held the stems against the forms, Tracy tightened the clamps. I was amazed at how easily the stems bent. All in all it was a very simple process and it seems to have worked out well.

Ripping the boards and milling the strips

It was a big weekend of work on the canoe. A while ago Andy Orsini, a buddy of mine from Santa Cruz and a fine woodworker/ wicked surfer, convinced me that it would be fun to buy the Western Red Cedar as boards and mill it into strips myself. So this past weekend I persuaded him to help me out and we headed over to Jackel Enterprises in Watsonville with a 12 ft long 2x12 plank strapped to the top of my VW Rabbit to pick out some boards. The guys at Jackel were friendly, helpful and meticulous about their grammar. (I was corrected to say "How many boards do you have?", not "How many boards do you got? oops.) We picked out the finest 18 ft boards of WRC they had; one 2x6 and the other 2x10. We also bought a 2x6 x 10 ft board of Port Orford Cedar for the inside stems. Port Orford Cedar is actually a cypress that grows in Oregon, but it is a beautiful and durable and lightweight wood. We strapped the 18 ft boards back on top of my 14 1/2 ft long car and headed back along hwy 1 to Andy's shop in Capitola. Now the fun began.

Turning 2 boards into 78 1/4" x 7/8" strips involves a lot of milling. From our careful pre-calculations we determined that we would get 80 strips out, but we lost two due to a couple early mishaps. After practicing with making the stem strips and the two early mistakes things went quite smoothly, most of which I can thank Andy for. WRC handles very well. There was very little fraying or chipping running through the machines and we ran it through a lot of machines. For a while it just seemed like I was turning money into sawdust.

Since we wanted end grain strips we cut the quarter sawn boards into smaller 1" x 2" boards using the table saw and then cut 5 strips exactly 9/32" wide and 7/8" high out of each of these. All of the strips were numbered in order as they came off the table saw so that I will be able to match the grain on both sides of the canoe as I lay the strips on the mold. These 9/32" strips were then fed through the planer once on each side to take off 1/64" on each side and bring the final width of the strips down to 1/4". (We were careful to renumber the strips as they came off the planer as well!) That was it for Saturday.

Sunday I headed back over the hill to Santa Cruz to finish up. It was taking a little longer than we had planned, but so far turning out really well. Today we routered the bead and cove edges into the strips so that they will fit snugly together without spaces. After setting up the table, router, feather boards, making dozens of minuscule adjustments and going through several tests on scrap pieces we finally got started on the last step in this process: pulling the 78 strips through the router once on each side. For those who haven't done the math, that works out to 2808 ft of wood strips! With the router throwing cedar sawdust in the air it felt like I was trapped in a very dry but sweet-smelling snowglobe and the wood just kept coming.

It was 9pm on Sunday night that I finally dropped Andy off at home and headed back over the hill to Mountain View with the wood once again strapped to the top of the car, this time a considerably lighter load. The strips turned out fantastically and I learned a whole lot about wood and woodworking from Andy. It was a great weekend for me, unfortunately it was kind of like work for Andy. I owe him a pair of hands for one of his jobs in the future.

Next up for the project: tracing and cutting out the station molds.