BUILD YOUR OWN CANOE E-Book

Dennis Davis

• Herausgeber: Crowood
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 224

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Build Your Own Canoe is a comprehensive, clearly structured and uncomplicated manual that guides the reader through the various stages of constructing an inexpensive, lightweight and versatile plywood canoe. Topics covered include: design considerations; building and fitting out the basic hull; customizing the hull to suit yourself; repair and maintenance; advice on transportation, storage, camping and river access; safety and the maiden voyage and the history of the canoe.

Leseprobe

BUILD YOUR OWN CANOE

Dennis Davis

The Crowood Press

First Published in 1997 by The Crowood Press Ltd Ramsbury, Marlborough Wiltshire SN8 2HR

www.crowood.com

This e-book edition first published in 2011

© Dennis Davis 1997

All rights reserved. This e-book is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

A catalogue reference for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 84797 366 5

Acknowledgements

For C, the best proof reader, and in memory of D, who enjoyed being paddled.

The plans and instructions given in this book are to enable the reader to build one DD23 ‘Bliss’ canoe for personal use. If more than one is to be built, or if further canoes are to be built for resale, additional royalties are then due to the author, who may be contacted at the address given on page 138 under ‘C & D Davis’.

Neither the author, nor the publisher, can be responsible for the way in which the canoe, or any of the equipment described in this book, is built or used.

All of the photographs are by the author and he would like to express his appreciation to the canoeists in the action pictures and to the owners and makers of the canoes and equipment featured, principally:

Keith Anderson (Suffolk Canoe Company); Alan Bridges (Birch Creek Canoe Company); Graham Mackereth (Pyranha Mouldings Ltd); Graham Warren (Moosehead cedar-canvas canoes).

All photography and line drawings by Dennis Davis.

Contents

Introduction

The History of the Canoe

Understanding Design

What You Need

Building the Basic Hull

Fitting Out the Hull

Accessories and Equipment

Getting on the Water

Transportation, Storage, Camping, and River Access

Repair and Maintenance

Glossary

Useful Addresses

Further Reading

Index

Introduction

Visit any exhibition or boat show which features canoes and you will see any number of mass-manufactured craft in various plastics intended to tempt the viewer on to the water. What you will not see are very many canoes made from plywood using the simple constructional technique known as ‘stitch-and-tape’. My first plywood stitch and tape boat was designed and built in 1964, and I have since been a confirmed enthusiast for the method, considering it to be the easiest and most economical way for the amateur boat builder to get afloat. If the price of ‘off the shelf’ canoes has thus far kept you and your family from enjoying recreational canoeing, the answer is here in this book; I will guide you through the process of making an inexpensive, lightweight, versatile canoe and give you the information you need to get the most from your canoe.

It is appropriate here to define what I mean by the term ‘canoe’, a word that has tended to have a different meaning depending on which side of the Atlantic the paddler is based. In Britain – for historical reasons which we shall consider briefly in Chapter 1 – small paddle-propelled craft that are pointed at both ends and in which the paddler faces the direction of travel have, until recently, been referred to generically as ‘canoes’. Thus both decked and open craft were referred to by the same name and to distinguish them the open craft were called Canadian canoes. In the early days of recreational canoeing in North America canoeists borrowed not only British designs but British terminology, and it was not until modern kayaks made an appearance that the American canoeist began to differentiate between canoe and kayak. Americans also differentiate between the American wood-canvas canoe and the Canadian all-wood type. However, the term ‘canoe’ has long meant an undecked craft such as the DD23 ‘Bliss’, which features in this book. The decked type is correctly known as a kayak; British paddlers are slowly adopting this nomenclature but many still use canoe when they mean kayak. It is, of course, possible to make a plywood kayak but this book will stick to the canoe!

The Open Canoe Association of Great Britain, which has developed from the Canadian-Canoe Association founded in 1956, is specifically concerned with canoeing, while the British Canoe Union covers both canoeing and kayaking and is the governing body of both sports in Britain. Other groups covering minority interests include the Open Canoe Sailing Group (whose members sail paddling canoes fitted with sailing gear as opposed to purpose-designed sailing canoes), the Historic Canoe & Kayak Association and, in the United States, the Wooden Canoe Heritage Association. All organize events to suit the interests of their members and there is usually no objection to non-members attending an event to find out what goes on and to ascertain whether the activities are compatible with their own interests.

In addition to the purely recreational meets, there are a number of competitive events open to the canoeist, ranging from the mildly exerting to the downright difficult. As with many other outdoor pursuits, canoeing can be undertaken at whatever level best suits the canoeist concerned. The British Canoe Union is the prime source of relevant information on local clubs, river access, competence training and coaching, and also organizes the annual International Canoe Exhibition, where much information can be gathered on the many and varied aspects of canoeing and related watersports.

Canoeing is no more dangerous than any other pastime or sport which involves being on or near water, but it does devolve upon the participant to take due care and ensure that he or she is as well prepared as possible. Throughout this book, I have emphasized the advisability of obtaining on-the-water training or instruction at the beginning of your canoeing career.

Incidentally, please take the male personal pronoun as being applicable to both male and female to save me the trouble and the waste of space which giving both wherever applicable would incur.

Perhaps some explanation should be given as to the designation of the DD23 ‘Bliss’ canoe. The DD23 refers to the twenty-third design in my portfolio (not all of which are currently available as plans). Numbers are a useful means of design identification but from time to time I give in to the urge to bestow a name on a design. ‘Bliss’ is named after William Bliss, who was one of the pioneers of open canoeing in Britain and, during the 1930s, wrote a couple of evocative books describing his trips on various rivers and canals. ‘Bliss’ also perfectly describes the gentle, tranquil, or exciting pastime of recreational canoeing, which I hope you will discover when you have built your own ‘Bliss’.

1 History of the Canoe

Both the canoe and the kayak originated as working boats and our European leisure craft have come to us via the decked skin-kayak of the Eskimo (Inuit) and the dugout and birch-bark canoe of the North American Indian. In addition to these there are, in many parts of the world, a number of craft loosely referred to as canoes, ranging from reed boats to beautifully constructed dug-outs. Those that developed in the northern hemisphere - from Greenland westward to the Baffin Islands, taking in the northern half of North America on the way, including Canada and Alaska – are the types that bear greatest resemblance to the ones that we see and use today.

The Inuit built the skin-covered, fully decked kayak as a vessel for hunting sea mammals. It made efficient use of the materials available and provided the adept solo paddler with a secure hunting platform. For transporting goods and families a larger, open-skin boat called the umiak was used. In this respect the umiak has more in common with the canoe, which was primarily a means of transporting people and goods through the waterways of the North American forests. Even today in parts of North America the canoe is seen as more of a working craft than as a means of recreation, and we must return to Britain to find the roots of the canoe/kayak as a recreational craft.

John MacGregor, an evangelical barrister, is reputed to have been the first recreational kayaker. He had seen both dug-out and birch-bark canoes, and skin-kayaks, while travelling in North America, and on his return to London he had made a relatively short, beamy kayak which he called Rob Roy. The first Rob Roy (there were several later versions), was about 4,570mm long × 710mm beam × 230mm deep, weighing 36.3kg, just small enough to fit into German railway wagons. She was built of oak using clinker, or lapstrake, construction, where the planks overlap each other (the same method as used for Thames skiffs,) and was fitted with a thin cedar deck. This original Rob Roy, though no longer seaworthy, has survived and is in a private collection. At least two other of MacGregor’s boats are in museum collections. MacGregor used a double paddle supplemented by a small lug sail as his means of propulsion, and in 1865 he paddled down the Thames at the start of a journey that he would recount in A Thousand Miles in the Rob Roy Canoe, which describes his adventures on the lakes and rivers of Europe. First published in 1866, the book has since run to many editions. MacGregor’s other two books of interest to canoeists are Rob Roy on the Baltic and Rob Roy on the Jordan, both of which again ran to a number of editions.

Fig 1 Greenland-type skin kayak.

Fig 2 An Algonquin type birch-bark canoe.

Thus was recreational kayaking/canoeing launched, and it soon became something of a craze among the leisured classes. Several of MacGregor’s contemporaries and fellow founder members of the Canoe Club wrote of their canoeing exploits; fine copies of these titles may now cost more than the materials for a plywood canoe, even assuming you can find one! The new sport was accorded its ultimate accolade when the Prince of Wales became Commodore of the Canoe Club and Queen Victoria granted its Royal designation in 1873. The Royal Canoe Club still exists with its club house on the banks of the Thames.

Fig 3 Section showing clinker (lapstrake) planking.

The wooden kayak of the Rob Roy type continued to be one of the most popular recreational small boats in England, and was taken up as a leisure craft in North America, especially in the north-east region. However, it must be said that boating as a leisure pursuit – even in such small craft as kayaks – was limited, as in Britain, to those business and professional men with both time and money to spare.

By the late 1800s, on both sides of the Atlantic, the Rob Roy type paddling kayak had metamorphosed into much more of a specialized sailing craft with a centreboard and a quite large sail area with (in Britain at least) often considerable ballast. This ultimately developed into the current International 10sq.-metre Canoe, one of the fastest sailing monohulls excluding sailboards. In Britain the paddling kayak then fell into decline and the sport was not revived until the birth of the folding kayak in Germany in the early twentieth century. By the 1930s the folding kayak was ubiquitous, being used even by the competitors in the 1936 Olympic Games. Folding kayaks were relatively costly but the less well-off could get afloat in home-made, or commercially constructed, rigid kayaks made of lath and canvas, but of a similar shape and size to the folding kayaks.

In the North America of the 1800s, the canoe was developing too but still as a work boat. The birch-bark had been made in a variety of sizes from the Montreal (canot du maître), about 11m long × 1.5m beam, to the solo Indian canoe which might be a mere 3.5m long × 700mm beam. At the height of the fur trade, when the Montreal canoes were being used to transport furs from Grand Portage on Lake Superior to Montreal, the numbers of paper birch trees (Betula papyrifera) being killed by having their bark removed must have been large indeed.

The bark canoe had reached its zenith in the canoe building of the North Eastern tribes, in particular the eastern Abenaki Indians. However, as the north woods continued to be opened up by lumbermen, surveyors and prospectors, and the availability of large birch trees decreased, an alternative skin material had to be found. A geographer and map-maker, David Thompson, records making a cedar-wood canoe in 1811 with its planks ‘sewn’ together with split pine root. There is no record as to whether this was clinker (overlapping lapstrake) construction but it seems that this is most likely since caulking thin planks successfully is almost impossible – the first stitch and glue canoe perhaps? In New York and Pennsylvania craftsmen were building all-wood canoes of clinker or smooth bevel-lapped construction; notable among these builders was J. Henry Rushton working in Canton, New York. Rushton was building lapstrake canoes commercially in 1876, and from 1887 he offered the canoes with bevel-edge planks which gave a smooth skin. Unfortunately, while these canoes were beautifully built they were relatively expensive, did not stand up to the rough handling of less experienced owners and were less easily repaired than the bark canoe. Further north in Maine and Canada, a solution closer to the bark canoe had evolved. The wood and canvas canoe had been developed and was being built by such famous companies as E.M. White, Old Town, B.N. Morris and Chestnut. It was not until 1902 that Rushton began building his Indian and Indian Girl wood-canvas canoes, mainly in response to public demand for canoes less expensive than the all-wood types.

Fig 4 Section showing smooth bevel-lapped planking.

It may seem but a short step from building in the Indian way – constructing the wooden framework inside the bark skin -to building on a male mould or form from the inside-out, but it seems to have developed over a longish period. Initially canvas was used as a repair material; the first builders to utilize it as a skin continued to use the Indian method of starting with the shaped skin. Nobody seems quite sure who took the first step to building on a male mould, or form, but it appears likely to have been Evan (Eve) H. Gerrish of Bangor, Maine, who was building wood-canvas canoes commercially by 1878. B.N. Morris started in 1882, and E.M. White in 1888.

The wood-canvas canoe was thus a direct development of the birch-bark canoe. The latter is built by first arranging the bark skin on the building plot and constructing the framework of planking and ribs within this, each canoe being individually built to suit the bark skin available, or the size required. The wood-canvas canoe is built by bending the ribs over a mould, then nailing the thin cedar planking to them so that every canoe from that mould will be the same shape within a certain tolerance. Instead of birch-bark the external skin is canvas, stretched over the planking and ribs and finished with filler and paint. Such craft are still being built today, as indeed is the birch-bark (albeit on a very small scale), but they are expensive when compared with modern plastic or aluminium canoes.

A wood-canvas canoe based on a Peterborough design.

Fig 5 Building a birch-bark canoe.

At the same time as the wood-canvas canoe was being developed in the USA, the all-wood canoe was being built in various forms just across the border in Canada, in particular around the Peterborough region. A number of builders were experimenting with rib and batten construction; double skin; tongued and grooved longitudinal planks, and tongued and grooved ribs only, the latter types of construction must have required extremely good work manship. I have seen a racing canoe made from longitudinal planks joined on brass T-shaped strips running between the planks. Experimentation was rife at this time, and by about 1870 the Canadian canoe was recognized as a type distinct from the American. In fact from the start of recreational canoeing in Britain and North America, both the decked canoes (kayaks) and the open type were referred to as canoes; it was not until the modern kayak was introduced in America after about 1945 that the kayak was distinguished from the canoe in that country. In Britain, confusingly, we continued to refer to both types as ‘canoes’, sometimes differentiating the open type by calling it a ‘Canadian’ canoe. Only now is Britain catching up with the rest of the world in correctly referring to the decked craft as kayaks and the activity kayaking.

North American four-plank racing canoe of the early 1900s with brass T-section strips between the planks.

The early recreational canoeists in North America viewed the wood-canvas canoe as a working boat so it was not until the turn of the century when the emphasis began to shift from canoe-sailing to paddling, that the wood-canvas canoe began to be used for leisure boating. They were then developed for this market, becoming more flat-bottomed, beamier and taking on the distinctively upswept, or elongated, ends beloved of artists (not necessarily good design moves other than for the family and courting couples on smooth waters; ‘girling’ was a notable activity among the younger canoeists!) In 1905, the open gunwale form of construction was adopted where the inwale and outer rubbing strip were left uncapped so that when the canoe is inverted any water can drain through the gaps formed between the inwale and rubbing strip by the thickness of the ribs sandwiched between them. This reduces the chance of the gunwale area rotting through the retention of water when the canoe is stored inverted. By the 1920s the wood-canvas canoe was in its modern form.

Canoeing in the United States declined throughout the 1930s and it was not until the advent of the aluminium canoe in about 1945 that it started to take off once more. In the 1960s glass-fibre reinforced plastic (GRP) canoes were beginning to be made, and the wood-canvas canoe went into an almost terminal decline until recent years when there has been something of a resurgence of interest and several new builders have entered the market.

In Britain (or perhaps we should say, in England, for they were used mainly on the Thames in the late nineteenth century and early 1900s), all-wood canoes were imported from the area around Peterborough, Ontario and a few similar craft were also made locally at boat-yards on the Thames and other lowland rivers. John Hayward, in his Canoeing with Sail and Paddle, published in 1893, suggests that there were at least a thousand Canadian canoes on the Thames alone at that time. These canoes were beautifully built of narrow planks butted together along their length and held together inside by a multitude of very closely spaced ribs fastened with thousands of clenched panel pins; when seen with their usual all-varnish finish they look superb. Interestingly, in contrast to the wood-canvas type they had a wide external gunwale, or rubbing strip, with no inwale, and were also generally fitted with longer end-decks. While delightful for paddling on the Thames, along the Backs at Cambridge, or on similar quiet waters, these canoes suffered badly if used for white water work and repairs were difficult. Perhaps because of this, open canoeing never really took off in Britain as it did in North America where the durable and fairly easily repaired wood and canvas canoe held sway until after 1945, although in competition with the then new aluminium canoes introduced by the Grumman Aircraft Company following their experience in building aluminium aircraft during the war. The modern equivalent of the Peterborough canoe is the cedar-strip canoe built from thin, narrow planks, edge-glued and clad inside and out with a glass-fibre cloth and epoxy resin laminate.

A wood-canvas canoe showing open gunwales, thwarts bolted under the inwales, and solid timber end-decks. This canoe is actually unfinished but the new owner could not resist trying her.

Fig 6 Closed gunwale on a bark canoe.

Fig 7 Open gunwale on a wood-canvas canoe.

Strickland all-wood canoe built at Lakefield, Ontario in about 1893. Note the wide rubbing strips well tapered at the ends, lack of inwales, long decks, and the numerous half-round ribs supporting the narrow planking. Restoration is not quite complete.

A strip-planked canoe, perhaps the modern equivalent of the all-wood Peterborough type.

In Europe, particularly in France and Scandinavia, the canoe was more popular than in Britain, and while a few moulded-veneer Scandinavian canoes were imported for a short period in the 1960s, these did not succeed in challenging the popularity of the folding kayak, the rigid canvas and lath, or plywood kayak which could be economically home-built, or the more recently introduced GRP kayaks. In the early 1960s Ken Littledyke, taking advantage of the newly available polyester resins, reinvented the stitch-and-tape method of plywood small boat construction with his Kayel kayaks, and rigid plywood kayaks enjoyed a very brief heyday. By this time the folding kayak had been fairly well eclipsed by rigid versions, mainly for reasons of cost but also because it is just as easy to carry a rigid kayak on a roof rack as a folded one in the car boot. Travel by train, where the folding kayak came into its own, was declining in Britain as more families could afford to run a car. There has been a more recent interest in the folding kayak and canoe in America where they and their crews are transported by light aircraft to the areas where there are lakes and rapid rivers not easily accessed by road.

As mentioned, moulded-veneer Scandinavian canoes did not enthuse many British paddlers, possibly because of cost, and so far as I know there were no British manufacturers of canoes until the later 1960s when one or two companies marketed GRP canoes and at least one hybrid with GRP lower hull (taken from a kayak mould I believe) and plywood topsides. The early GRP canoes had a tendency to be rather heavy and not especially well designed in comparison with the traditional wood-canvas or all-wood canoe (the only real yardstick). There is a lath and canvas design by P.W. Blandford published in his book, Canoes and Canoeing (1962), which looks attractively traditional in photographs but I have never seen one on the water. It was at about this time that Ken Littledyke produced plans for a canoe using his stitch-and-tape method, the first of the modern plywood canoes, of which the DD23 ‘Bliss’ described in this book is a descendent. There is no way of knowing just who first devised this method of making boats, nor indeed where it was first employed. The photograph (below) shows the bow of a traditionally stitched fishing boat from Oman, now in the Exeter Maritime Museum, and as mentioned earlier, stitched cedar plank canoes were known in the early 1800s in North America. Perhaps the most famous boat to be designed for this method of construction is the Mirror dinghy. This was first devised in a functional but rather boxy form by Barry Bucknell, and was then improved and refined by boat designer Jack Holt. In a letter published in Yachts and Yachting dated May 3 1963, Barry Bucknell writes, ‘As far as my knowledge goes, all credit for the development of this particular combination of copper wire and fibre-glass goes to Ken Littledyke.’ Since then the method has migrated around the world.

A hybrid canoe with a GRP lower hull and plywood top strake and decks.

A DD23 ‘Bliss’ canoe being energetically paddled two-up.

The stem and forward planking of a Sambuk fishing boat from Oman. The original coconut-fibre has been replaced by terylene twine where repairs have been made.

More recently in North America there has been a resurgence of interest in the lapstrake canoe but with a difference: it is now made from plywood strakes (planks) glued at the laps and with no further framing other than rubbing strips and a thwart or two. In Britain, sailing dinghies have been built using this form of construction for about the past forty-five years so it cannot be said to be a new method, but it does produce a light, strong craft, requiring only a fairly simple mould just a little more complex than that required for normal clinker or lapstrake construction. This by no means exhausts the variety of building methods utilized for making canoes over the years but will suffice for this modest tome.

For most of the years since the 1960s the canoe in Britain retained its minority interest until quite recently when its popularity began to grow. The numbers in use have increased and there are even (since 1995) open canoe classes at some slalom and white-water events. This rise in popularity is unlikely ever to be properly explained but may be owed in part to the introduction of relatively inexpensive plastic canoes costing much the same as a kayak, and in part to some effective marketing by companies specializing in selling canoes rather than kayaks. There is no doubt, too, that the open canoe can be a far more versatile craft than the kayak in all respects but for sea travel: the canoe can venture to sea only in settled calm conditions, or when fitted with an adequate spray deck which can be relied upon to deal with heavy water rather than just spray or rain; certainly it should not normally be considered suitable for coastal use.

WHY PLYWOOD?

Coming now to a thriving modern canoe culture, what are the advantages of building your own plywood craft? Economy must be the first answer. In January 1996 the builder of a ‘Bliss’ wrote to tell me he had built his canoe for £63.00; compare this with any commercially made equivalent. Not only that, it looks very good and he sent a photograph to prove it worked! I am not suggesting that this is a figure every builder will achieve, or will even wish to emulate, but it is possible to build a plywood canoe very economically.

Building your own canoe is also a pleasure, not only because you will have the feeling of achievement when it is completed but you will know every part of it and just how it was put together. Another reason often cited by people choosing to build a plywood canoe is the relatively light weight of the completed boat. Exotic materials such as Kevlar do make for lighter fibre-reinforced plastics (FRP) craft but are prohibitively expensive for normal recreational use; plywood offers an acceptable compromise for the amateur canoe builder. Furthermore, while building it you will have the opportunity to customize the basic hull to suit yourself; this will be explained further in Chapter 5.

Given adequate adult supervision, the building of a stitch-and-tape plywood boat can be an enjoyable undertaking for children; I have known of several in their early teens who have successfully completed such a project with very little assistance. Younger children must, of course, be supervised at all times when using tools and resins, but just as the whole family can enjoy using the canoe, so, too, can they derive enjoyment and education from building it.