Build a canoe in a weekend

You can't; it's impossible.

This was the challenge that Brandon and I set ourselves. After taking a hefty plastic canoe upstream to the Arctic circle in Finland, we felt we were overdue a decent canoe.

We had every advantage - experience in boat building, a workshop big enough to swing an eight, a bandsaw, planer, skilsaw, trestles, heating, the works.

Brandon cut out the ply to shape before we started, so we'd already broken the rules, and he faired some of the drafting errors. Works started on Friday evening, and by 1am most of the planks were sewn together with copper ties.

We paddled home to Andy's canal boat and fell asleep instantly.

In the morning we carried on stitching. Jojo came to help, and fed us when we looked hungry.

Thanks Jo-jo, you saved our sanity!

The gunwales and the inwales we cut from a lump of joinery pine, on a truculent bandsaw. As the pine was 8' long the pieces had to be scarfed together.

Its a good one, isnt it?

The strips, only 33mm by 15mm wouldnt go around the sheer so we rigged up a stove, coffee tin, foil and hoover pipe to make a steam box. Even so it was a three man job to clamp them in position.

We ended up with 25 clamps on one side of a boat, and three more sides to go!

So we had to make a million nips, to do the job of clamps.
In the meantime our host, Andy, harkening to the beat of a different drummer, was hacking up yet more joinery pine to make a strip planked boat. The stem was laminated from some well seasoned ash, and a strong back set up on trestles nailed to the floor.

After hours of hideous noises from the bandsaw, planer and router table, most of the joinery pine had been made into sawdust, leaving only a pile of very thin thin thin strips. These began to take shape around the carefully set up moulds, with assistance from Jack.

On Sunday we had a visitation from Jay, who set to work on the strip planked boat. Brandon and I worked on filleting the insides of our canoes. The shed resounded to Show of Hands, ABBA, Kinks and Paul Brady.

By the end of Sunday both ply boats were faired and ready for glassing.

On Monday the glass went on.

I was summoned home at 4:30 pm on Monday. So there you have it - three semi finished canoes. We worked from early morning to the wee small hours for two days, and two goodish days on top, and we didnt finish.

I haven't been so tired or dirty or happy for ages!