Recent content by Benson Gray

That cover image was very popular. Racine used a similar version for their catalog as shown below. Benson

She picked the 15-foot-long Old Town Trapper model in AA grade (mahogany) with half ribs, outside stems, and traditional filler. Jerry usually doesn't allow Old Town canoes to be built in a class but has made an exception in this case. Benson

Yes, they are scheduled to give a talk titled "100 Years of Canoe Building" on Thursday evening. The link below has the full presentation schedule. I asked Rollin about retirement several years ago when I dropped off my Indian Old Town canoe for restoration. His response was "I've thought...

The link below has Rollin and Jerry on television this evening. Their segment is from about 1:00 to 7:30. Benson https://www.newscentermaine.com/video/news/local/207/207-june-12-2025/97-41f6e6c0-356d-4079-bef3-368b6b4ff482

A typical guideboat is usually larger and more stable than most canoes. However, there are a huge variety of both guideboat and canoe designs so any general comparison is limited. There is also the question of how the oarlocks are mounted. The best leverage requires placing the oarlocks a few...

The 2012 link is below. Benson https://web.archive.org/web/20120419013017/http://www.canoetripping.net/blog1/

Yes, but it is much less efficient. The usual solution is a good, wide angle mirror. Benson

The Bing dates can't be trusted. 2012 is probably when Bing first indexed this forum. The oldest record of this site in the Wayback Machine archive is from April 19th, 2012. I just used Bing to search for my posts in this and the WCHA forum. None of the Bing dates were accurate. Some were...

That post is available in the link below as message number three in that thread. It may have been moved some time after the Bing search robot indexed the forum. The local search tool in this forum will usually give better results. Good luck, Benson...

I suspect that they don't but it will easy enough to remove them as a test and see. Good luck, Benson

The information at the link below and similar canoes at https://www.woodencanoe.org/classifieds may help you value it. I would like to see some pictures. Good luck with the sale, Benson https://forums.wcha.org/threads/how-much-is-my-old-wooden-canoe-worth.57/

This is happening in conjunction with the Annual Assembly of the Wooden Canoe Heritage Association. The link below has more details. Benson https://www.woodencanoe.org/2025-assembly

A slightly related topic is that Old Town and other canoe builders have promoted the benefits of sponsons for a long time. The page below from their 1947 catalog shows that you can still sail a canoe with sponsons even if it is full of water. The link below has more about this canoe which is...

Yes, but this is from a sample that has less than three percent of the total so it could be a statistical anomaly. The sampling technique was not totally random either. Crowd sourced projects have their limitations. Benson

The Old Town Canoe Company Build Record Archive Project described at https://www.wcha.org/catalogs/old-town/records/ is another data source. That database has a total 14,276 Old Towns that were shipped between 1905 and 1980 which includes some plastic canoes. The number of destinations outside...