.....so now what would I do differently next time

I learned a lot from building this boat.  I suspect there will be a next one at some point and there are definitely things I would do differently.

1. I would not build a 10 panel plywood boat.  For the amount of effort required I could have done a strip boat.
2. I would  be more careful reinforcing and filleting before removing the wires.  At the stems there were some serious compound bends that made it difficult to form and two areas separated.  I filled them in reasonably well, but still......
3. I would have made a scarfing jig to glue the lengths of plywood together.  I did this for gunwales and they worked out great.  The plywood joins aren't nearly as good.
4. I don't like the cane bench seat much.  I think I'll make a tractor seat for the boat using my Wenonah double tractor seat as a mold.  Carbon fiber would look pretty good, I think.
5. Plan for making floatation tanks ahead of time.  I ended up doing it because I did a pretty messy job at the ends of the boat with the fiberglass.  The ends of the boat are very fine so it was really difficult to get the glass into the ends of the boat very cleanly.  
6. I should have used more lights when varnishing.  There are a few sags and drips that I'm not too happy with near the shear line.

The boat I built is exactly the boat I wanted, but it really wasn't the easiest boat for a first time builder due to the fine entry.  That fine entry makes for a fast boat, but with pretty severe compound bends in the wood and very narrow ends that were hard to fiberglass on the inside.  It all worked out well, but it is something to consider when deciding what to build.

So what is next?  I think I'd like to build a short, freestyle boat.  That sounds like fun.  

Well, it is insanely fast

Took it out last Saturday minus the seat to check where I wanted to mount the seat.  The boat was modeled after a Blackhawk boat I once had that was relatively narrow with low primary stability and really fast.  Well, this one is that way too. I started kneeling in it and it started to feel pretty stable after an hour or so.   I mounted the seat pretty low (4"-5" drops) and went out Sunday again.  After I had a few hours in it, I felt pretty comfortable in it.  It tracks really straight.  It takes a little lean to convince it to turn reasonably quickly.  It isn't meant to be particularly maneuverable, but it is really fast.  I also found that it is actually fairly stable when paddled reasonably fast.  I've never paddled a boat before that had such a big stability difference between sitting still and moving at speed.
I built this to be a flat water exercise machine and it really couldn't be better for the purpose.  Really fast, really fun. 

Nearly done.....

It finally managed to get warm here in Illinois so I could get the final 3 coats of varnish to the inside and get the gunwales installed.  Today, I'll head down to the lake and try it out just kneeling in the boat to try to get an idea where (fore and aft) to install the seat.  I suspect I'd be close eyeballing it, but I'd be really unhappy to have to drill more holed than I have to in the gunwales.

Nearly forgot to mention how I decided what to build......

I had a solo canoe years ago from Blackhawk canoe...a Fishhawk.  I loved the canoe and should have never sold it.  It was very narrow and about 12' long.  I knew I wanted a little longer boat this time so found the dimensions from the web, added a couple of feet and about an inch on the width.  I found a guy in the Twin Cities called Eskimo Tom who puts a design into a naval architecture program to do a plate expansion which will loft the form and create the panels.  I asked for a 10 panel boat which is quite a few more than most people do.  I should have done 6 or 8 which would have been much easier and probably nearly as fast.  In a few weeks, I'll find out if I made a good choice!

Strange warm day in November. Time for Gunwales

The last real bit of construction was making the gunwales.  They are pretty simple.  The gunwales (the outside ones) are 3/4"x3/4" cherry and the inwales (inside ones) are 3/4x1" deep.  The engineer in me wanted a bit more to hang the seat off of so I went a bit deeper with the inwales.  The question you are dying to ask is where do you find 15' pieces of cherry.  You don't.  I had two 8'x3/4" pieces that I ripped down into 8 pieces and made 6:1 scarf joints on the end.  I spent about 10 minutes making up the tapering jig (sorry no picture) and it worked quite well.  I then used an epoxy glue (not the stuff for the fiberglass) on the scarf joints, wrapped them up in wax paper, put some clamping blocks on the outside and gently clamped the joints.

OK, now I have 16' pieces of wood.  I figured I would be better off installing the gunwales before I finished the edges so I clamped them on the edge of the boat.  Ideally, I wanted the top inwale and gunwale to be co-planar and have the hull stick up a little since I wanted to use a belt sander to level everything off.  Unfortunately, the hull bent in ways the gunwales didn't want to bend so I needed to plane off some of the gunwale/inwale in spots (block plane was quicker and less scary than a belt sander) and then finish it with the belt sander.  To attach the gunwales/inwales to the boat, I used stainless screws on about 8" centers.  I made up a 5 minute jig with some scrap wood and a 1/8 dowel rod to get the same distance from the top of the boat and center-to-center on the screws.   I installed all the screws and sanded the gunwales flush.  One problem I had was on the ends.  The bend was pretty severe and I needed a few extra screws.  Also, on the ends I needed to put the screws in from the outside.  I'll fill those holes with dowel plugs when I'm done.

Once that was all done, I took off the gunwales and rounded off the edges with a 1/4" radius round over bit on the router table.  I had trouble keeping wood in contact with the bit, but a couple of featherboards and my able daughter helped me to get it done.

All that is left is a little hand work on the gunwales, 3 coats of varnish inside, about 5 coats of Danish Oil on the gunwales, and installing the seat.  I just need another insanely warm weekend (or two).

Glassing done...time to varnish

After glassing I also added two flotation tanks.  They came out OK, but fitting all those compound angles is harder than you'd think.  This weekend I varnished using a marine polyurethane.  I ended up thinning it 1:7 with thinner just to keep the runs to  a minimum.  It isn't all that hard, but there is a lot of sanding involved; first with the epoxy (nice clear shine goes away!), then with the varnish layers.  I was able to do two coats a day as long as I gently wet sanded at the end.  You really need to wet sand to keep the paper from loading up too much.  I did this sanding 100% by hand.  4 coats are on and it looks good.  I have the gunnels milled.  Next step is to lay them onto the boat with clamps. screw them down, trim the boat sticking up above the gunnels.  They I can pull the screws, rout the forms of the gunnels, finish the gunnels (marine grade danish oil.....want the matt  look next to the gloss of the canoe.).  The inside of the boat gets 3-4 coats of varnish.  Then just mount the gunwales and the seats and I am ready to go.  If the weather can hold for at least one more weekend, I might make it.

Glassing....finally

Glassing....finally.

I put a seal coat on first and glassed with a 4 oz cloth with an extra layer on the ends.  I slit the cloth on the ends and overlapped the glass so I have 3 layers on the ends.  I used MAS slow epoxy and it is definitely slow.  I used it at 95F and it was still fine.  I needed to put on 3 extra coats to fill the weave.  That might be because it was so warm, though.  The images are of the seal layer.  4 oz cloth is a pain to work with as it snags really easily.