Fred In Wisc CC14 Cheap Canoe at 80% Scale

[terrulian]

This is skillful and beautiful work.
My seats would have come out better with a router jig for the curves. I totally should have thought of that instead of a sabre saw jig, although that worked OK. You sure have a lot of clamps.

[Fred in Wisc]

Thanks for the kind words gentlemen.

Trying to spend a little time on this each day so it keeps moving along.

Last night I pulled the clamps from the strip planked deck. Scraped off the big globs of epoxy with a scraper.



Trimmed it off with a router and flush trim pattern bit. Unfortunately my bit was a little dull and I forgot how fragile cedar can be, I split off one of the end strips when cutting against the grain. Frustrating, but not irreversible. One of those times I had to say to myself- "So, that thing you just did.....not gonna do it that way again are ya?"





Ran the sander over the deck a little to clean it up and remove the "fuzz" from the dull router. It looks pretty nice.



Trimmed that broken strip back out with a sharp wood chisel. Was able to get it close enough that it shouldn't be noticeable with a new strip glued in. Then glued in the outboard strips next to the rub rails. I hadn't figured out a way to clamp that all at once so I did it in 2 steps.



Then glued up the bow deck. Used a little more glue this time, there were some small gaps between a few of the strips in the first deck that I'll have to fill in. Trying to get better at this each time. Going to use a new sharp router bit to trim that one when it's cured.

[Cracker Larry]

That's going to look beautiful! Very nice.

[Fred in Wisc]

Trimmed the rest of the decks off. Way smoother cutting with a brand new triple flute flush cut bit. No chipping at all. But it was cutting so smooth and nice that I forgot to stop before the end of the curve on the inboard end of the deck. So I ended up following the little straight bit at the end where I hadn't cut the thwart in a curve. You can see it on the left end here. Ah, well, nothing a little wood flour putty won't fix.



Then I rough trimmed the curved trim pieces that I had laminated for the ends of the decks. These won't be glued in place until the gaps around the decks are filled in and a nice roundover is put on the top edges of the decks. I'd like to be able to run the router all the way to the end of the deck and then cover the transition with the trim piece, so they need to glue up later. I might laminate a small strip on the outside above the decks to make the deck to trim joint look perfect. Only adds a little work and it covers my router slip above, and the spot where I made the other deck a little short on one corner.

I was kind of nervous about doing these, but it was easier than I thought. Just marked and rough cut them a little big with a back saw, then sanded down until the matched the curve of the sides pretty close. I didn't worry much about getting the fit exact, that's going to fill in with wood flour putty and be pretty inconspicuous. Probably nobody but me will even notice it once it's bright finished. Trying to be realistic about that stuff so I don't take forever to build this as I have in the past.





The ends of the trim will be rounded off and a little radius applied to the top and bottom edges before it's glued on, but it's pretty much the right shape now. I'm pretty pleased with it.

[Fred in Wisc]

Filled the seams between the rubrails and decks, but it's curing awful slow. About 4 days now and I can still just barely dent it with a fingernail, pushing hard. But it's better each day. I think I had the mix a little off, I only made about 30ml of resin to do that and I must have been off a cc or 2 using the syringes to measure.

Hopefully it's hard enough to router the edges of the decks and sand tomorrow so I can get that finished and install the curved deck trim. After that it's probably just glassing the decks and bottom and it should be good to go.

[Fred in Wisc]

That epoxy in the seams finally finished curing, so I put a nice 1/2" routered roundover on the edge of the decks and did a little sanding to clean them up. Here they are with an 80 grit finish, I think I will take that to about 150 before glassing and coating, so they look nice and scratch free. Also have a couple small areas to add a little filler to the seam where it's not quite flush to the surface.

Had I planned this better, I would not have put the roundover on top of the rubrail where the decks go. It makes the epoxy joint between the deck and rubrail too wide. LIve and learn, plus probably nobody else is going to notice once it's done.







You can see the epoxy joint is a little wide where I broke the deck strip with the dull router bit, and had to replace it. I doubt anyone will notice that but me. And it sure doesn't bother me enough to tear it out and try to redo it better.

[Cracker Larry]

[terrulian]

I've got a bunch of those little glitches, and the list is getting longer.
My wife is kind enough to say they are "birthmarks" and it really is true you'd have to have a masochistic streak to point them out to everyone who would otherwise not notice.
That's what this forum is for!

[Fred in Wisc]

As usual, all the other stuff of life is keeping me from working on this. Part of that being a pretty major interior rebuild on my old 16' aluminum boat. I can't wait to retire, have time to mess around with the stuff I really like doing. Alas, I just turned 45 so it's gonna be a little while yet.

I got the front and rear deck trim on. It was interesting to figure out how to clamp it, and then to minimize the uneven appearance where it joins the deck, I added another lamination to the trim to give it a really nice finished appearance. Also filled some of the seams between the deck and rubrail where I hadn't added quite enough epoxy to bring them out flush.

[Cracker Larry]

That ain't no cheap canoe! Beautiful work Fred