CHAPTER
III.
HOW TO BUILD A DECKED CANVAS CRUISING CANOE
ANY
MAN in the least
acquainted with tools can build this canoe. I made my
first one when I was twelve and two more when I was
sixteen and nineteen respectively. The first one had
no sails and only a little cockpit three feet long, so
that, while she was good for day cruises and paddling
up creeks after snipe and rail birds, you could
neither sleep in her nor sail her. The second had a
six foot cockpit and leg-o'-mutton mainsail and
jigger. Also a gaudy awning-canvas tent which went
over the cockpit, and I had many a glorious cruise in
her, sleeping at night in the canoe after hauling her
out on the beach and banking sand around her to keep
her steady.
She had one defect which you should be warned
against -- she had a kayak bow and stern, little low
six-inch oak blocks screwed to the keel at each end,
just high enough to take the six ribbands of the
frame. Easy to make, but, gee! she was a wet boat in
heavy weather! That kayak bow would shoot through
every wave like a dagger, and in spite of an
eighteen-inch hood over the cockpit for'd, a deluge of
sea water would come aft and most of it would stay in
the canoe. But she would go like a streak, and when I
was seventeen I sailed her across Prince's Bay in a
bird of a southeast blow, soaked to the ears with salt
spray but cheerful as a clam at high tide. It was some
hike, believe me!
I stung another boy with her for $5 and built No.3,
which had a 14-inch bow and 12-inch stern, was
fourteen feet long by 32 inches beam. She had
lateen-rigged mainsail and jigger, weighed 42 pounds,
and was a corking little boat. I had her for ten years
and cruised in her for weeks at a time. She finally
died of numerous broken ribs, a bunch of kids using
her holy bottom as a jumping stand one winter when she
was left out in the yard.
Number Four is shown in the accompanying
illustrations. She is 16 inches deep at the bow and 14
at the stern, 10 inches amidships, fourteen feet long,
33 inches beam and weighs just 40 pounds, exclusive of
her sails. She will cost you $7.00 to build, not
including her sails, and for an all-around cruiser is
hard to beat, as she will live in water that would
drown an open canoe, is a dry, rainproof and
mosquito-proof home to sleep in at night, and will
sail dozens of miles where you would paddle one.
Most of our writers of boys' books advise building
a canvas canoe of barrel hoops. That is conclusive
evidence that they never built a canoe in their lives,
for of all the material to give you a cranky, unsafe,
tippy canoe the barrel hoop is king. The reason is
because it is round -- just the shape to roll over --
and can't be made to hold any other shape. Look at any
good Indian model canoe (Morris, White, etc.) and you
will see that it is flat-bottomed with a fair round
bilge or turnup from bottom to sides and it is hard to
upset because you must submerge one side before the
other can come up. Now any kind of a barrel hoop has
been steamed round, there is not a flat spot in it
anywhere, and to make a canoe even passably steady you
want at least 20 inches of flat bottom before curving
up over the bilge.
The ideal rib stick is one that will tend to keep
flat and yet permit a sharp bend upward at the bilge.
There is no wood better for this purpose than black
ash, though white will do. Go to any wagonmaker's shop
and ask him for a board of black ash about five feet
long, an inch thick and five inches wide. He will
charge you fifteen cents for it. Take it to the
nearest woodworking mill and get them to rip it up for
you into strips one eighth inch thick. You will get
some twenty canoe ribs out of the board. While at the
mill ask to see their No.1 spruce stock. Tell them you
want one board, planed both sides, sixteen feet long,
free from knots. Have this ripped up into strips a
quarter-inch thick until you have sixteen of them. You
will have half your board still left and from it you
will have two 3/4-inch pieces ripped off and two
2-inch. Next, you want a piece of 2-inch by 3-inch
white oak six feet long, two pieces of 7/8-inch
half-round yellow pine molding sixteen feet long, two
pieces 1/2-inch quarter-round ditto and one piece
2-1/2 x 1/2-inch beaded white pine for a cockpit
coaming. Have them all wrapped up into a bundle, pay
your mill bill, which should be about two dollars, and
march home with the entire material for your canoe
frame on your shoulder. The bundle will weigh thirty
pounds.
Arrived home the first thing to do is to set to
work at that stick of 2 by 3-inch white oak, for out
of it you make the stem and stern knees. From the
drawings herewith you will get the angles for bow and
stern pieces. Saw across the top of the stick at this
angle and again a parallel cut 14 inches from the top.
Saw it straight across 9 inches further on and take
the two pieces so obtained and stand the 14-inch piece
up on the other. You will at once see that you have,
roughly, the bow knee.
 DETAILS
OF STEM AND STERN CONSTRUCTION Waterat IV
STEM CONSTRUCTION
Click
here for larger image of stem.
STERN CONSTRUCTION
Click
here for larger image of stern.
Draw the curve of the bow on both pieces of wood
and saw off the superfluous wood beyond the curve. You
now must work both pieces into triangular shape and
the best tool to do it with is a camp axe. Your stem
should be half an inch thick at the extreme front so
as to give room to screw on a brass stem band, so draw
two lines 1/2-inch apart down the center of the front
face of the blocks. Hew from these lines back to the
rear corners with your axe until you have dubbed the
stem and keel-piece roughly triangular in cross
section and finish smooth with a plane. Now nail the
stem to the keel-piece and you are ready to fit the
deadwood, the triangular piece which holds both of
them together.
Take off the angle for this on a piece of paper
from your already assembled stem and keel-piece and
transfer the angle to your piece of oak stick, being
careful to saw out the block with true cuts square
across.
If well done the deadwood block will fit snugly and
you can screw it home with 2-1/2-inch, No.14 iron
screws into stem and keel-piece. Work over the
deadwood block until you get a true fit, as this is
what takes the shock if you ram anything (and you're
always ramming things on a canoe cruise). Drill holes
in the deadwood a little larger than the screws and
just a little smaller than these in the back of stem
and keel-piece. The bow knee is now done and the stern
is made the same way.
The next job will be to cut a shallow 1/8-inch
rabbet on stem and stern and keel-piece to take the
canvas, and six notches on a side for the ends of the
ribbands. The top notches must be deep enough to take
two ribbands one on top of the other, 1/2 inch deep.
Now saw out the places in both stem and stern keel
blocks to take keelson and keel, as shown in the
working drawings, and the long job on stem and stern
knees is done.
FRAME
PLAN
Click
here for a larger image.
The canoe will go ahead with a rush from now on.
Take one of your 3/4-inch strips and cut it 13 feet
long for a keelson. Cut a shallow notch in the center
1/8-inch by 1 inch and cut one like it at every foot
each way to within one foot from each end. Turn the
notches down and screw on the stern and stem knees at
each end of the keelson.
Follow with a ribband nailed along under the
keelson and of the same length, and then fit the keel,
rockering it 1-1/2 inches each way and screwing from
underneath to the keelson with long 3-inch screws or
bolts. By rockering is meant tapering along the under
side of the keel, which is made out of one of your
2-inch spruce strips and should taper down to 1/2-inch
deep at each end, beginning five feet from the end.
The job is best done with a hatchet and finished to a
line with the plane.
Now you are ready for the center mould. Make it of
box boards as shown in the illustrations and set up
over the middle notch in the keelson. Now take the
first of your ash ribs, slip it through the middle
notch and bend it snugly around the mould board, tying
together across the top with a piece of string so that
the rib cannot fly out straight again.
Now take four ribbands, slip them in pairs over the
ends of the mid rib, bend them in at bow and stern and
nail them temporarily over their notches with thin
brads. Do not cut them off until everything else is
done, as there will be a lot of taking up and letting
out before the bottom is even and smooth.
Put on all the other ribbands, five on a side,
spacing them evenly along the mid rib and tacking them
in place by brads driven through ribband and rib into
the edge of the mould board. Tack them temporarily
over their notches at stem and stern, letting each
ribband take its natural curve.
You are now ready for the ribs, only the last two
of which at each end will have to be steamed.
RIBBANDS
OF Waterat IV
Beginning each side of the mid rib,
shove in a rib down between the two ribbands of the
gunwale, through the notch under the keelson and up
between the opposite pair of gunwale ribbands. Tack it
with a brad half-driven through the keelson and rib
and then push down the ends of the rib on each side
until you get a true flat, almost like that of the mid
rib with almost as sharp a bend at the bilge. Lash
tight with twine around the gunwale.
You will also have to lash the mould board down, as
the tendency of the ash rib is to raise it and make
your bottom not flat and safe but round and cranky.
Put in the other ribs the same way, working in pairs
towards bow and stern, always trying to have each
curve a little less than the one before it and keeping
them as flat across the keelson as possible. The last
two will have to be steamed, easily done by simply
wrapping a soaking towel of scalding water about the
rib and letting it stand ten minutes while you drip on
more steaming water from the tea kettle.
The ribs just behind the stem and stern bend up
from the keel so sharply that they simply must break,
so, to put them in, whittle a block to shape and screw
it down on the keelson, cut the rib in two and screw
the lower ends of it to the block.
Tie the ribs to the ribbands wherever they cross
and then turn the canoe frame over. You will find it
all hills and valleys -- a flat spot here, a bulge
there, two halves of the same rib uneven, a lopsided
place somewhere else. What it needs is patient
adjustment, shoving down the end of a rib in one place
to give her more bilge, letting it up somewhere else,
pulling a ribband in a little flatter or letting it
out a bit, but finally the whole bottom will come out
smooth and fair and is ready to rivet.
Whether to use copper rivets or clinched copper
nails I leave to you. All my canoes except this last
one were done with 2d copper nails clinched inside and
all were staunch and strong.
In this one I used rivets (No. 1, 7/8-inch long)
but it was a tedious job as they all had to have holes
drilled for them, a shallow countersink made to sink
the rivet-head flush with the ribband, and the little
burrs are most exasperating to keep on while you are
hammering over the rivet head. With copper nails it is
just a drill hole with the brad awl, insert the nail
and clinch over. However, do them all but the gunwale,
which will be all out of shape from the pressure of
the rib ends, and then untie your twine and adjust the
gunwale to get a fair and pretty sheer.
Secure with brass screws and cut off the rib ends
flush with the gunwale. You will find that the strain
of the ribs on the ribbands has pulled both your stem
and stern knee out of shape so that ugly cracks show
around the deadwood block. You now pull out all those
temporary brads in the ribband ends and free the stem
and stern. Close up the cracks snugly with a few taps
of the hammer and then put back the ribbands,
beginning with the gunwales and cutting each off to
exactly fit in its notch. Secure with 3/4-inch brass
screws, two to the notch.
The frame is now done and should weigh 24 pounds.
Next you go in for the deck framing.
DECK
FRAMING OF THE Waterat IV
At bow and stern insert the
triangular white pine boards called breasthooks. Cut a
1-1/2-inch hole for the mainmast step and cut out an
oak block with a 1-inch round cup drilled in it for a
footstep for the mainmast and secure it to the bow
deadwood, giving the mainmast a pretty "rake" or lean
aft. Now for the cockpit. If you are going to sleep in
her it ought to be six feet long, so the crossbraces
must go at the third rib each way from mid rib. Make
these crosspieces out of your 2-inch spruce strip,
sawing them so as to pitch an inch each way from the
center. Cut a notch for the deck ridge piece and then
put in your braces with 1-1/2-inch brass screws driven
into their ends through the gunwale. At the same time
take out the mould board as you no longer need it.
BODY
VIEW
Next get out your ridge pieces of
the 2-inch spruce strip, planing them to the ridge
along the top surface and fitting them into notches in
the cross braces and breasthooks at bow and stern.
The rear ridge piece wants a 1-1/2-inch hole cut in
it for the jigger mast step, so you had better nail
reinforcing strips on each side where this hole goes
through.
The cockpit coaming should go about three inches
from the gunwale, parallel to it, so lay off the three
inches on each side on the cross braces. Then cut from
your 2-1/2-inch white pine beaded cockpit coaming two
pieces of the same length as between the marks and
screw them to the cross braces, allowing the beading
to just project above the cross brace.
To fit the coaming sides, measure off two lengths a
little longer than you need, cut a spreader six inches
shorter than the inside measurement from gunwale at
the mid rib and bend the two coaming sides around this
spreader, held fast with a loop of rope at each end.
Pick up this frame and put it on the canoe and saw off
the coaming ends so that they will exactly fit between
the cross braces, slip them into place and secure with
blocks, besides nailing with brads to the cockpit end
pieces.
At each rib you will now need a small block between
gunwale and cockpit coaming secured by 1-1/2-inch
brass screws through the gunwale and 1-inch screws
through the coaming. When all are in, the spreader can
be knocked out and the canoe frame is ready for the
canvas and will weigh 28 pounds.
To make the canvas lie smoothly a last job will be
to plane the edges of the ribbands round and smooth so
that sharp rib edges will not make the canoe look like
the ribs of a starved dog.
AFTER
STRETCHING CANVAS
Get ten yards of 10-oz. duck canvas
(20 cents a yard). It will weigh 100 oz. or a little
over 6 lbs. Cut it in half and have the two 5-yard
pieces sewed together on the sewing machine along the
blue line overlap mark.
Now take off the keel and lay this seam along the
keelson ribband, tacking it here and there with 4-oz.
copper tacks. Fold the canvas up over bow and stern
and tack here and there to the gunwale. Cut off the
surplus all around and save all of it, for there is
enough for both bow and stern deck and the strips of
deck outside the coaming.
Now stretch and tack on the canvas, working each
way from the center, but do not drive the tacks home
nor use more than one every four inches. At the point
where the stem and stern rabbet crosses the crack in
the bow and stern knee, drill a half-inch hole and
drive in a soft white pine plug called a stopwater.
Next daub the whole rabbet over with white lead paste
and stretch the canvas tight into the rabbet, tacking
close together. Now work back along the gunwale
towards the mid-rib, stretching the canvas as tight as
you can, tacking every two inches and being sure to
work on opposite sides of the canoe alternately. In
spite of all your care there will probably be a gather
or pucker in the canvas amidships, but do not let this
worry you, simply slit it four inches down from the
gunwale and sew up the overlap.
Take your leftover canvas and get out the bow and
stern decks, tacking them over the side of the
gunwales.
You will also find that the original pieces of
canvas cut off along the side when reversed will
exactly fit along the coaming. Tack them to it,
stretch taut over the gunwale and trim off all the
hangover.
The canoe is now ready for paint and weighs 34
pounds. I have tried all kinds of ways to reduce the
paint weight and also its cost. On this last canoe I
tried one coat of shellac and two of Sherwin-Williams
willow green canoe varnish. Total paint bill $3.00,
total weight 6 pounds. On the whole the cheapest and
best was that on Waterat III, two coats of
white lead paint and a finish of any color preferred.
Avoid varnishes and shellacs and save expense. You
ought to come out under $2.00 cost and 8 pounds
weight.
After the paint is on, put your 7/8-inch yellow
pine half round molding along your gunwales, and the
1/2-inch quarter-round beading around the cockpit.
Give these two coats of varnish and you are ready to
go at your rigging.
ROUNDING
THE MARK
An exciting moment in a race
of decked sailing canoes with batwing sails.
RIGGING
I have tried leg-o'-mutton, lateen, and battened
leg-o'-mutton or Canadian Club, and on the whole I
prefer the latter. The leg-o'-mutton is the simplest,
but it has long spars impossible to stow in the canoe,
and its baggy leach makes it slow sailing. The lateen
also has long spars, but the draft is excellent and
fast. It is, however, hard to reef.
Waterat IV, my latest canoe, has the
battened leg-o'-mutton shown in the illustrations. It
is a topheavy, dangerous rig in large sizes for any
but first-class canoe sailors, and the amount of
canvas shown in the photographs is "man's sized."
Sailing the little witch in a squally breeze is some
busy occupation! However, by making the boom of the
mainsail two feet shorter and all the rest of the
measurements in like proportion (the actual dimensions
as given in the sail plan drawing) a very good safe
rig is had. The best sailcloth is American drilling,
14 cents a yard, and you will want about eight
yards.
To lay out a sail, choose a level spot on the lawn
and stake out the sail according to the dimensions
given, cocking the boom up 18 inches above a right
angle and setting the gaff up nearly straight,
allowing just room for a block between it and the mast
head. Join the stakes with twine and spread out the
canvas under the twine outline, always laying it
parallel to the leach or after-edge of the sail. Hem
it all around and put in grommets every foot along the
boom, gaff and luff. To put in the batten, fold over a
pocket in the sail just large enough to pass a
1/4-inch by 1-inch strip of spruce ribband and sew a
seam along both edges of the pocket on the sewing
machine.
SAIL
PLAN
To make the spars you can buy 1-1/2-inch and
1-1/4-inch round spruce sticks 14 feet long at any
sash-and-door mill for about 25 cents apiece and they
will save you much weary planing as all they need is
tapering at the ends. The masts are of 1-1/2-inch
stock, booms and gaffs 1-1/4-inch. For gaff jaws you
can buy a regular brass canoe gaff jaw and bend it
over at the right angle to grip the mast when the gaff
is up. You will need 5 two-inch mast rings for the
luffs of mainsail and mizzen, and don't forget to
grease the mast with tallow candle or slush.
Four brass cleats and four pulley blocks complete
your running rigging. Two pulley blocks are for the
halyards at main and mizzen mast heads, one on the
deck for a main halyard fairleader and one on the
rudder head for the mizzen sheet.
For extras, first of all, a bottom grid. Cut up
what you have left of the ribband stock into 6-foot
lengths and tie them to the ribs in the cockpit along
between the ribbands. Otherwise your toes will be
digging into the canvas bottom all the time, making
unsightly dents in it. Another way is to tie in a
sheet of oilcloth or heavy canvas, which will serve to
keep your feet off the bottom.
You want two canoe paddles, a big double blade with
drip cups, and a little single-blade pudding-stick for
working in narrow creeks, frogging, etc. The latter
may be 30 inches long by 5 inches wide and you saw and
whittle it out of a white pine board.
THE
Varmint UNDER AN ASH BREEZE
Then you want a cockpit tent to have
the best fun in a canoe. Get six yards of 8-ounce duck
canvas. Make a rope frame with two spreaders the same
size as your cockpit and stretch the rope frame
between main and mizzen masts 30 inches above the
cockpit. Over this spread your canvas, cutting and
pinning until you have a little rectangular house over
the cockpit, and have it sewed up on the machine. Cut
a door in one side and fill with mosquito netting. Put
in staples in the cockpit leading along the sides and
grommets in the bottom hem of the tent to match the
staples. Take along a browse bag and fill it with
leaves or sage at night, and, my word for it, you will
sleep in that mosquito-proof, rain-proof and
damp-proof canoe-house like a major!
 More
...
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© 2002 Craig
O'Donnell, editor &
general factotum.
May not be reproduced without my permission. Go scan
your own damn stuff.
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