Cedar Strip Canoe build-along

[Martin S.]

bump

[Gary™]

I've got some extra time and realized I'd not finished posting my construction story.  Sorry for that and I commit to finishing it.



When we left off I'd hand planed the diamonds flat.  I then ran them through the drum sander to give a consistent thickness to the assembly.   Once I had that I used the bandsaw to rip of strips a little thicker than the standard strip thickness.  Taking two adjacent strips and flipping one you get this

   



I then proceeded to glue the two parts together using the strongback as a flat table.   Once that was done the drum sander was used to get it to my standard 1/4" strip thickness.  Bead and cove was done later with all the other strips at the same time.

   



Careful attention to grain in the diamonds gives an arrow effect.

   

[Gary™]

Next came the jig for the inner and outer stems.  It's made out of MDF, coated with heavy duty transparent packing tape and then a generous coating of wax.   One layer was build and used as the pattern to trim the rest on the router table.   Don't forget to make two extra layers that will be used on the strong back at this time

   

   

These are one of the two extras I mentioned earlier mounted on the stongback.  

     Trimming them all at the same time makes for a perfect match.

[Gary™]

Hoping you find this worthwhile

[PaulC]

Yes, it is. Thanks for posting.

[Gary™]

The inner and outer stems lamination are both visible in this glue up.  There is a heavy coat of wax over packing tape between the two so they'll separate later (with considerable effort).

They are made of 1/8" strips using the lamination method (no steam involved).  The inner stem is all cedar (makes shaping it easier).  The outer stem is alternating layers of ash and walnut to give a striped effect.  Note there is a sacrificial piece in contact with the clamps that is discarded.

The LOML helped me with this glue-up to make it go faster.  Each strip gets coated with epoxy on both sides and them placed into the strip sandwich.   When all the strips were in we started working the strips around the mold.  A rubber hammer helps to register all the strips down against the backing.  I did have a few extra strips in case one broke but I was lucky and none did in the final glue up (I did test bend then in advance and only broke one strip then).  

The mold is 2x the strip width so that I would glue up both the bow and stern stems at the same time.  

   

We left it in the clamps for 48 hours and then spent an hour coaxing it off the forms.  Once done, a disc sander was used to knock off the high glue spots before I ran it through the thickness planer.  Large gobs of glue will ruin the planer knives.  Once I got a flat reference side I used the bandsaw to cut it down the middle resulting in both bow and stern stems.

[Gary™]

The next steps if to cut out the forms using the plans I had from Bear Mountain.  I used particle board for my forms because I'd read it received staples very well.  So I cut out half the forms and faired the curve to the plans using a Japanese saw rasp.  Using these as a template, I trimmed the other half of the forms since my plans were mirrored bow to stern.

I then mounted the forms to the strongback keeping 12" spacing.  Once mounted they were aligned with a sight line and squared to the strongback.   A temporary strip was tacked to the top to keep them in position.   Then a strip was bent along the forms and final shaping was done to adjust to a fair curve.  Here is the result.

   

   

   

Just imagining what the stems will look like (looking good)

   

You'll notice that there are black marks on the concrete under the wheels on the stongback.  In that work position, there is no twist in the strongback.   It allows me to roll it out to work on and put it away when I'm done.

[Gary™]

One other tip; carpet tubes work great for storing the strips that'll be used. Each pair of strips are taped together and numbered so they are used in sequence.

[Gary™]

After the forms are installed their edges must be coated with packing tape and waxed so the strips will separate from them later on.  

After that I could start installing the strips and shaping the inner stem at the same time.  Here is three strips and the feature strip installed.   I'm using the staple technique to hold them to the forms.   Painters tape and a variety of jigs were used to hold the strips in place during glue up with Tightbond III.  The cove side of the strip is up so it'll hold glue while I install the next strip.

   

   

And more strips and more shaping of the inner stem.  You can see that just above the blue clamp.

   

   

And even more strips until the stem is covered.

   

[jteneyck]

Very cool. I hadn't noticed this when you first started the project. Glad I looked now. Lot's of good learning to be had for projects having nothing to do with boats. Thanks for taking the time and effort to post your build.

John