Every shaving I take off is one gram less I have to portage.
Fibreglass laying on the canoe, accomplished with Noah's help.
Can't decide if it looks more like the canoe's wedding dress or shroud.
Woohoo!
Closeup of the first coat. Some ugly wrinkles appeared about half an hour after we finished.
Third coat is on, still very wet. The accent stripes turned out really dark. They're still cedar, just came out very dark.
Closeup of the one end. The hanging fiberglass will be trimmed off once the epoxy is dry.
Yet another shot of the end. It's really hard to take a good picture of the whole thing in the confines of the garage.
Thanks to Rich, Derek, Eric and my Dad for all their help.
Taking it off the moulds.
Lift!
Gently!
There it is, looks like a boat! The stem mold needed a bit of extra persuasion, still in the canoe in the picture.
The bottom is a dull white because the epoxy has been sanded. It'll get it's shiny color back once it's been varnished.
The green spots are tape that was on the molds. I haven't had time to clean it up yet.
I'm surprised at how much epoxy leaked through the staple holes. That will get cleaned up when the inside is sanded.
Sanding the inside.
35 pounds!
I had some help sanding.
Fibreglass on the inside ready to go. I cut it a wee bit short though.
Fibreglass all ready to go.
Closeup of the stem.
Adding the last coat of epoxy.
Cutting the scuppers out of the gunwales. I used a drill press with a 13/16" Forstner bit, will later sand them smooth.
Closeup of my nifty jig.
First inwale on.
Fitting the deck. Screws are not fully in yet as I was still testing fit, removing/shaping/reinstalling several times.
Installing the outwales. Even borrowing some clamps I still used every single clamp I had. The umbrellas are part of a palm tree setup for a VBS program, nothing to do with the canoe.
And the comment "Oh oh, I forgot to mix this batch" [of epoxy] has come back to haunt me. I found a bubble, and turns out this section of the second layer of epoxy never hardened. I scraped off the offending layers, sure hope I got it all. Time will tell. My beautiful hull!
And the repair job. Hope it turns out...
And here it is, sitting on a campsite in Algonquin park. The only water it's seen is the rain, which is normal as it always rains when we camp.
The varnish is so fresh the campsite smells faintly of curing varnish. The last coat went on 3 days before this picture.
With all the inlaws standing by, up goes the cork. Yes that's real champagne.
A bit dribbled over the bow, and then we drank the rest.
Maiden voyage. Can't describe the feeling of finally paddling it around.
Ah, first scratch. Glad we got that over with.
Abbi doesn't like canoes. She enjoyed later expeditions when she had a more comfortable position to sit in.
There's still some work to be done, the yoke is a MEC special since I ran out of time, and the paddles will be replaced with custom cherry ones.
Sunset at Rock Lake, Algonquin Park.
In the river between Rock and Whitefish Lakes.
Jodie put up with and supported my obsession.
