The project - I purchased a 1964 Old Town Canoe from a guy in St. Michaels. Amy and I took the kids to the small craft festival in October, 2010 at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, as I was interested in building a small boat (canoe/kayak) from scratch. I was really planning to talk to the guys from Chesapeake Light Craft, who have some beautiful kits and they sell the plans as well. My thought was to buy the plans and then see if I could find the materials and build it over a few years. All of this was predicated upon the boat building course I am taking at the Harford County Community College (Northeastern Maryland's Harvard)
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| 16ft Old Town Canoe |
We parked at the festival and were walking in - hadn't been there more than 10 minutes, and we found a husband and wife with two canoes on the roof - one of which was for sale. A handmade sign read "1960's canoe - $425", and knowing nothing about it, we stopped and talked, but it was already too late. I had been pricing "older" (wood and canvas, as they are known) canoes, and found most to be a lot more, in worse condition, or for those in mint condition, between $1,000 and 7,000. I brought back some of the instructors from the school, and an hour later, I had bought my first canoe. The canoe is a 1964 Old Town Guide, a fairly common boat, somewhat mass produced in Maine. It is made from Red Cedar, White Cedar, and Mahogany on the really hard parts. It has a thick piece of canvas on over the hull to protect it and waterproof it. Unfortunately, mine also had a ton of epoxy and broken planks. (Planks run longways along the hull, between the ribs and the canvas and give the hull its semi-solid base.)  |
| The Stern (no, not Howard - the back end) |
Once the canoe was home, I started the disassembly. To get the canvas off, it is a several step process. Two long pieces of mahogany run long each side on either side of the ribs on both sides of the boat. These are known as the Gunwales - each side having an Inwale and an Outwale (inwale is on the interior of the ribs, and the outwale is on the outside of the rib).
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| The outwales on top of the canoe |
To remove the canvas, the Outwale had to be removed on each side. This is a series of flat head screws that holds the wood in place. Once removed, it exposes a series of brass tacks that hold the canvas in place along the edges.
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| The Shiny pieces are the stem bands. Solid brass (I think) |
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| Stem band removed, and only a little canvas remaining |
At each end are two copper (or brass - not sure yet - need to strip and polish) pieces that serve to protect the ends of the canoe. These are also held in place with smaller flat tipped screws. Once removes the boat is then turned upside down and the long wooded keel is removed after the screws are removed from the inside along the bottom middle.
All of this was fairly easy, except that the previous owners had made ad hoc repairs, replacing screws with the wrong ones or using epoxy to fill holes and repair large breaks. Epoxy is the boaters equivalent to bondo in the auto repair world. It also serves as a cure all, and is often abused. It is also an excellent glue, with waterproof super-strong bonds.
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| The top of the deck is solid epoxy 4 inches deep |
I then removed all of the tacks along the ribs, and along the bow and stern edges (Bow is the front, Stern is the back for newbies). There were about 15,000 tacks, and I removed and bagged them all. (All of the parts being removed are being carefully bagged, labeled and stored for re-use later, but I suspect the tacks are trashed.)
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| The first big hunk of canvas removed |
Now, comes the removal of the canvas. The canvas is just like what you think of canvas - softer, like an artists canvas. However, to make it waterproof, the builders filled the canvas' pores with a white lead paste mixture, that is likely highly toxic, which in turn makes the canvas roll like aluminum sheeting instead. Once I had broken the canvas free from the one end, I rolled it up toward the other, exposing the red cedar planks underneath. When I got to the far end, I cut the canvas free, and then pulled off the remained from the end. The cedar was magnificent and the canoe brought me back to an older way of building.
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| The naked lady - Canvas removed and 50 year old cedar |
It was funny, when I was in class, someone was talking about a friend of theirs who had just bought a canoe made of some modern plastic. Immediately the crowd greeted the news with groans, and smart assed comments. References to Tupperware were made, comments about never riding in one of those followed soon after. This is not to disparage those who buy the more modern canoe, but I can say that with my new investment, I can see why - it is the difference between buying the old 1960's Camaro, and buying the new sports car. There is something about working on something so old, built with limited tools, and natural products. The design of the canoe hadn't evolved significantly in hundreds of years, and the wood and canvas canoe remains fairly true to the original designed brought forth by early craftsmen and Native Americans. It is pretty impressive - it still works well.
With the canvas removed, it is now time to see what you have really bought - The canvas gives an appearance of solid, but once removed, the stems (the wood on the inside of the planks that runs behind the curved bow and stern, and provides the rounded edge that cuts through the water) are beaten pretty badly with rot and nail holes. Surprise number 1. I left these alone at first and focused on the broken planks in the hull - referred to as checks. Checks happen when the boat is dropped on a rock or when it hits something in the water. The wood buckles, while the canvas remains solid. However, over the years, checks leave black marks under the varnish.
Once you identify the broken plank from above, the canoe is rolled over so you can access the plan from underneath. The plank is made of 4"x3/8" red cedar. You remove a section of no less than 3 ribs of planking (the section must span at least three ribs to minimize structural compromise - I can assure you, most of mine for 4-5 ribs). To make it tougher, you have to ensure that the joints are staggered, so you might lose a little more material than you would otherwise need. You take a straight edge and cut along the plank, over the center of a rib. Fortunately the original nailer (person who nailed) had a tendency to nail back and forth so I simply cut between the nails. Once cut, I had to remove all of the nails - Interestingly, when the nails were originally driven, they used brass tacks and drove them through the plank and into the rib. They worked in pairs and while the guy with the hammer drove the nail, the partner stood on the other side with a solid piece of steel, which provided a surface which offered a solid base onto which the hammerer could drive the nail. The steel then curled over the point of the nail as it tried to come through the wood. Once curled, the nails were very difficult to remove. I used a detailed nail puller, to preserve the plank to the extent possible. Once I have replacement material, I will use the old piece as a template. I removed a total of 9 sections of wood, ranging from about 9 inches to about 20 inches.
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| Lots to be removed - That is a 12 inch ruler |
After the planks were removed, numbered and stored, I began to remove the decks. The decks are semi-flat pieces of white cedar that allow the stem to meet with the gunwales to form a solid connection. Further the decks provide hand holds for pulling or carrying the boat. Lastly, the decks have a decorative label and provide a nice finished look. Unfortunately, it is also where boats seem to rot the most. when stored upside down, the water runs down as these are the lowest parts of the boat, and water collects inside and out. In turn, the one end is rotting, and the other end is rotted and then filled in with about 6 pounds of epoxy. This epoxy and rot ran into the stems, and two of the rib tips. All of these will need to be replaced. It is starting to feel like with everything new I uncover, I find something else.
In short, rot seems to be in both ends pretty rampantly. This is fairly common, but unfortunately, this was one more lottery I have lost. I will be spending much of my time cutting, patching and repairing the wood in these areas for the weeks to come.
Stay tuned.
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