boat

After a few trials and errors I finally sewed the skin on my sof kayak. It only took two years of the kayak hanging under our deck in order for me to start the process.

I finally really finished the canoe today! I hadn’t coated the inside of the canoe until this week, but timing and weather made it happen.

César’s Bark Canoe is a fantastic NFB (National Film Board) film from 1971, produced by Bernard Gosselin. It captures César Newashish, a 67-year-old Attikamek of the Manawan Reserve north of Montreal, building a canoe solely from the materials from the forest, including birchbark, cedar splints, spruce roots and gum.

Last weekend the family and I launched the Freedom for the first time. It wasn’t quite “finished” in that I hadn’t varnished it yet, but I wanted to wait for the weather to cool a bit before spraying the urethane.

After I installed the decks, I concentrated on finishing the outwales, seat placement and thwarts. The outwale install was okay but I had a couple of issues.

I started caning the stern seat last week, and so far it is going fine. I’m using the instructions from Gilpatrick’s book “Building A Strip Canoe,” and his descriptions and photos are very good.

I glued the inwales in a couple of weeks ago. I haven’t updated the blog because I’ve been going full-tilt on the canoe every chance I get, and I’ve been having some family fun camping in BC!

I managed to get the first seat joined and glued last night. I opted to try and do mortise and tenon joints.

I finally finished scarfing the gunwales. My second attempt went very well, but one joint got a piece of dirt or debris in it.

This past week’s goal was to scarf the gunwales. I cut the scarfs using a sled based on the one shown here.