Playing House. - Raising the Sides.

Here I admit right away that I like to plan in conjunction with the canoe rather than first thinking it all out in my head. I interact. Once the replacement gunwales had been sprung and glued into place, holes patched with epoxy and fiberglass, and a midships bulkhead and centerboard case installed, I cut the carrying yoke out, as it would be in the way of the central rowing position. Now I could step into the hull and sit on a temporary seat and start creating a set of measurements around my body. How high must the seat be for a comfortable rowing position? If the seat is here, how high does the oarlock position need to be for rowing, how far aft of the seat and how far apart? If I want to sleep on board, (and I thought that was important), can I be comfortable in the six feet between the central bulkhead and the stern flotation compartment.? Fortunately, I was all alone in my studio so I did not have to worry about how others might view my playing house within this beat-up old canoe.

From all these measurements I could begin to formulate the first step of building up the sides. They needed to be higher by a few inches and wider. Like most canoes, this one had high raked up ends and a low freeboard amidships so it seemed reasonable to flatten the sheer line by raising the sides in the center and tapering them off into the ends. A big concern was to keep things as light as possible so I used some " mahogany"quarter inch plywood. The obvious way to raise the sides to give height and width was to use the outside of the gunwales as a base and attach short ribs to the inside at intervals to support them. I then ripped the plywood into long thin strips and clamped one side up to see how they would have to be cut to shape and scarf jointed. Once again you will notice that I`m holding parts up to the canoe and taking measurements while at the same time figuring out how to do it. It`s a co-operative process: the parts are informing me how best to proceed.

I have my own rough cedar lumber and plenty of scrap pieces of wood so the materials at hand guided my decisions as well. Because red cedar is light and could be cut in long thin strips, I found it made sense to use it to spring a strip from bow to stern on either side to create a smooth new sheer line and gunwale edge. But first, the plywood strip scarf joints were created with a belt sander, glued together and then they were clamped and glued to the gunwale. Finally the new upper gunwale pieces were bent into the shape of the new sheer line and glued to the outside edge of the plywood sides.( This also gained an extra two inches of beam.) That`s much the best way to go especially with this by guess and by golly style of boat building. I`s all very precise in the end, you just have to get your mind turned around in the right direction.

In terms of innovation in this phase of the building, placing the new gunwale strip on the outside rather on the inside was unusual. It just grew out of the process and invented itself. If I had planned this in advance, I`m sure I would have followed standard boat building practice and attached the new gunwale strip to the ribs first and then applied the plywood to the outside (and lost two inches of width). This may seem a picky point, but I would guess that discoveries often have their birth in semi structured environments like this. There`s nothing quite like messing about while building boats!

* I read John Gardner`s book Building Classic Small Craft and Wooden Boat Magazine for reference throughout this project. No harm in using the accumulated experience of many people, and the ability to read print and images for information and create syntheses is part of the skill set I brought to this project.