The last week has been spent sanding, and oiling, and sanding, and oiling. The boat interior is over all well smoothed and ready for varnish. There is about 2 square feet of planking that has a mysterious black paint spatter that is under the last coat of varnish and too deep to sand by hand. I will have to strip down the varnish a layer, hopefully removing the offending spatter without removing the patina of the wood and original varnish. Well there is always stain.
The process has been tedious, and not a lot to show in pictures. I did have the epiphany - I probably could have avoided sanding the entire boat, and simply applied a coat of linseed oil to refresh and clean the wood, but that would not have caused arthritis in my hand.
So, as you may remember, the planks on the canoe are made from cedar harvested around 1964 - its really old and brittle. Over the many years of use, canoes have things happen - they get dropped, they hit rocks, the break and rot in places. Fortunately for me, there is not a lot of significant damage to the planks, but all of the damage appears to be on the left side. If you look at the bottom left side of the canoe most of the boards are missing - accounting for about 10% of the hull. Looking at it today, it appears unlikely that it will ever float.
The solution to this is simple -
1. Remove the nails with a nail puller - a delicate claw and pry tool that digs into the wood, under the nail head, and pops it out, without significant damage - I say "significant" because the wood is now useless, but it is still wood.
2. Find replacement cedar, preferably old stuff, to match the existing wood around the canoe, and then oil, stain, and varnish it to match
3. Using special brass tacks, replace the plank in the exact same size and shape, and using a hunk of steel behind the nail to round over the point (called "clinching")
My intent was to use the cedar I purchased on Columbus Day, but someone (out of luck) at the boat school was pulling down an old shed with siding made from 5 inch cedar planks. So using a planer (designed to smooth and level wood), I took to shaping this cedar, with a half inch on one side and a 1/4 inch on the other, making a wedge, by running it through a planer from 50 years ago. Hundreds of passes later, I now have a 7 foot length and a few 4-footers to replace the missing pieces - about 3/8's of an inch thick. To put it in context, 3/8 is thinner than an iPad. The wood has to be this thin to make the bends required to shape around the hull of the boat.
Staining has been a challenge though. The wood planks have aged into a golden patina, while the newer wood is darker and stains even deeper. I suspect that a few coats of lineed oil and then the varnish will help it lighten, but I also suspect I am wrong. In fact, it is likely I will have stripes of plans that run down the interior of the hull.
Today, I finished up by finishing the interior sanding, and washed out the dust. I will need to put a coat of linseed oil onto the exposed wood opened by the sanding, and then this oil will have to sit for several days (perhaps weeks). In fact, it is likely that soon I will have to bring the canoe into the living room, for it to heat up and dry the oil as the weather is getting colder and everything is taking longer to dry.
Lastly, on a side note, the planing of the cedar left me with a nose full of particulate, but more interesting was the q-tip full of cedar dust - no wonder my wife won't nibble on my earlobes. Happy 10th anniversary to my wife.
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