Solo on the Light Side

If I attempted that, I would probably end up having a fever dream resembling an LSD trip, where geometric designs danced in my sight line to the tune of some obscure Pink Floyd tune, like Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict.

I admire your perseverance and they do look very cool. When I couldn't get the sides of my decks to line up with the gunwales, I stopped using them, so now I have deckless canoes, but the grab handles are sanded, at least, and once they get banged around a bit, they get dark spots on them, which greatly enhances the mediocrity.

I bought my wife a bunch of really original Valentine's presents, and a neighbourhood couple was visiting. We didn't know that he had not bought her anything, so my wife was showing the gal her nifty presents, and the neighbour lady's face kept getting darker. She gave her husband a very evil look and he said "hey hold on, I caught you four walleye out ice fishing for your Valentines present", at which point she growled at him "They are still in the sled, frozen and uncleaned". Later that night, my pal said to me "why do you have to wreck it for all men, dial that sh!t back". I'm not saying your canoe decks are in the Valentine's present orbit, but.....well.....you're making us all look bad, LOL!

Given one of the goals for this build is to maintain the same weight, while extending the original 15' design to 17'. Weight is going to be part of every idea/decision made along the way and sometimes you try stuff that is a bit out there, which also means there is a chance something is not going to work out like you plan.

Thwarts aren't a big part of the weight budget, but since every part is being considered ... I had an idea for them ... BALSA and fiberglass

So here is my chunk of balsa 2" x 3" x 36", very light, very pale and very boring from a wood visage vantage



First issue is that balsa is quite soft and these are going to be bolted to the gunnels, so i will need some hardwood, at least where the thwart terminates and it gets bolted. So the balsa gets milled up to 1.5" x .75" pieces, a taper cut just over 4" long is added and cherry blocks to fit those tapers are cut (FYI that is more than a 10:1 skarf, so it is structural)



Standard epoxy procedure, to glue the blocks on, coat with unthickened epoxy, followed by a thin layer of thickened epoxy



after clamp up we have a really awkward looking balsa/cherry piece



The extra cherry is taken off with the radial arm saw and then passed through the planer to get it perfectly flat. I think using my bandsaw would have been easier and safer for removing the chunk, but I discovered that using the blade on brass (as the package says is fine) really dulls the blade for wood, it needs to be changed and I got lazy.



The radial saw was setup to rip the chunk down the middle



and then make the cut, the pic shows what I was after ... the cut on the left side and each piece rotated 45 degrees on the right, giving a nice symmetrical triangle cut on the planer flattened surface (so ready to glue)



There were a few cherry strips from another project laying around, so I added one to the middle, just because it was needed visually IMO



Spring clamps are a nice method for epoxy clamping, they don't over pressure the joint



One side gets roughly flattened, then on through the planer to finish the job



Small taper added with the radial, this is both to trim a little weight and I think it looks better






A quick round over on the router and the blank is ready for sanding





and now the final step, adding the fiberglass. This 2 oz sleeve material I picked up along with shrink tube for epoxy layups .... this was quite expensive, but I wanted to make this work



and after setting. 1) I ordered the wrong shrink tubing 2) the glass sleeving doesn't get fully clear .... both learning points, but frustrating





I am not going to use these, so I have to make another set. You have seen the general construction technique I am going to use, so I will skip through the second set in less detail. These will be a conventional set with no fiber glass and will use red cedar, ash and cherry.

This is the assembled glue up and tapers already cut. The thin white strips are ash and the taper is cut to just end at the strip and not cut it. The ash strips are basically the weight bearing rails, so leaving them intact is the priority, the inner cedar strip is thicker to allow for sufficient hardwood territory for the eventual bolting on.



and a few more cherry blocks



where I discovered the dull bandsaw blade



and back to the radial for the trim instead



cleaned up in the planer



Setup and cut in two (again), you can see a small saw cut line on the right pair, that is from the band saw wandering, fortunately it will disappear with the epoxy glue up



You can see how even the wedge shape is here



Dry fit for glue up, adding cherry rail to centre



and the epoxy glue up ...



Quick sand with 80 grit on a flat sander to get a mostly flat surface



then clean up with the planer and taking them to the final 5/8" thickness



Rounding the edges with a 1/4" round over bit





adding in the edge taper detail using the radial saw



and the finished product after sanding with foam block (80/120/180/220), ready for finish





This was an interesting experience, I had high hopes for the balsa fiberglass experiment, but visually it just didn't work with the sleeve I picked and the I doubt the shrink sleeve would have made much difference to the cloudy presentation. Weight wise the 2 thwarts produced weighed 135 and 150 grams (4.7 oz/5.3 oz), the difference likely epoxy application rate. These appear to be quite stiff and strong, but I won't be testing then to breakage to find out.

The replacement conventional pair was interesting, I like the general appearance more and the weights came in at 137.8 g and 137.8 g (4.9 oz), so pretty much identical. These are also quite strong, with just a little more spring ... quite suitable for purpose IMO. The outside rails are rounded over, but leaving the edge entirely covered in hardwood, this is for wear ... the hardwood will stand up better to hands and ropes that get slung around the hand holds from time to time.

The second set was made from saved scraps of other projects and did just as well as the made for purpose (read that expensive) versions, lesson for me is to not get too clever, there is not a lot of weight saving to be had in this area, so just do a simple plan for hardwood placements and don't over size and you will be in light weight territory.




Brian