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Busy winter

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Or at least I hope it will be. Every fall I have grand plans to work in the shop on my many projects but the cold and dark usually win and I end up being a bum just sitting in the house reading books and eating.

To help keep me motivated I just ordered 100 board feet of red cedar and 25 board feet of cherry. Hoping to get at least 3 canoes built before the thaw. I'd really like to get one done while there is still a spot or two of open water to see if it will work or needs to be redesigned.

Finally started working on getting my shop organized this past weekend. Last January I'd cut out all the fronts, backs, and sides for 35 drawers that need to go in the shop cabinets. That's where they sat until yesterday when I got all the dadoes cut, cut out the bottoms, and started putting them together. Hopefully that project will be done by the weekend and then I can start putting stuff away. I'll probably build a second strong back as well this weekend. Need to hang a couple more lights too. Hopefully the weekend after that will see another stripper taking shape!

Alan
 
Good for you!

I hope you get done what you set out to do. It will make for more interesting reading for me this winter.

I like watching you and your shop turn out work.
 
I've been getting my shop ready for winter projects too. I finally finished up the electricity and a friend donated a nice wood stove he didn't need any more, Vermont Casting Vigilant.
My wife indicated she was going to retire the first of the year, so I really needed that shop to be ready for a "hideaway", now she says "maybe springtime I'll retire", she's funny:confused:

I'll be looking forward to your builds Alan, interesting stuff.
 
First up will be a solo 18.5' long with a roughly 22" water line and a bit of rocker to hopefully keep it a bit more manageable than a C1 proboat in following or rear quartering waves. I don't know how stable it will be, which is why I'd like to slip it in the water before it all gets hard.

Next is the exact opposite. A tandem around 17' that's very stable. I'm donating my labor (they're paying for materials) and will build it for the county Nature Center's fundraiser coming up next April. This will be my first "standard" woodstrip build with normal seats and gunwales. I might have trouble leaving well enough alone. :)

After that I'm not sure. Either a 17' tandem for myself or a high capacity yet fast solo somewhere around 16' that will be built for a long trip I've been kicking around for next summer; down the Bloodvein river from Red Lake to Lake Winnipeg and then turn around and paddle back up.

I've been spending many hours in front of the computer learning new software and playing around with designs. I've learned a lot and have a lot more to learn yet. I'm really looking forward to moving from computer, to forms, to strips, and finally to the water and to see how reality and virtual reality compare.

Alan
 
Truck showed up to deliver the lumber today and all the cedar is knotty. Don't know how that happened since in every conversation during the ordering process both sides kept talking about clear lumber. I thought the price was too good to be true, now I know why. Guess I'll have to wait another week.

Now I just need to figure out what I want to do with 100 board feet of 7/8 cedar, keep it or send it back. I do use it from time to time for projects and it's cheaper than I can buy it at the lumber yard in town. Might take me a while yo get rid of that much though.

Alan
 
That's a shame Alan. I too have had that happen.
If you can afford it, I'd keep it in your stock pile. There is always a need for some material of any kind. It really won't go bad.
I'd order more and get them to repeat the order back to you. Maybe just an off day for the order desk. :)
 
I've had that happen too, guaranteed clear on the phone, when it arrives, full of knots. Think I'm going to start that Chestnut Chum soon, hopefully next week.
 
No working on canoe projects this weekend, still finishing up other things. We've been having a great fall so I took advantage of warm weather and no wind Saturday to work on finishing up the outside steel siding on my shop. Got the north wall done so only the south side to go. Wanted to get it all done this weekend but much too windy for putting up steel today. Instead cleaned up the yard a bit and hauled some junk out of the shop. Hardware for all the shop drawers showed up this week so I got all the slides and drawers installed friday and tonight got all the drawer fronts installed. Man, measuring, cutting, assembling, and installing 38 drawers is a lot of work! Need to decide if I'm going to spray the fronts or just leave them raw. The spraying wouldn't be so bad but the sanding, sanding, and sanding doesn't have me real excited.

Alan
 
The weather isn't doing much for progress on canoes but I guess I can't complain. It's been beautiful here. I even got bit by a mosquito a few nights ago. I'll take all the mid-October mosquitos I can get! More sun, warm, and no wind so this weekend will be spent working outside and finishing up the siding on my shop.

Got my drawer fronts sprayed so one of these nights I'll get the pulls put on and then I can start putting things away in preparation for taking everything back out and scattering it all over the shop when I start my projects.

Cedar showed up (again) today and this time it's what I ordered. Ended up with 120 board feet so that should keep my busy for a while. Been thinking about how I wanted to rip it, table saw or band saw. Stripperguy was really pushing the band saw last time I did this but I didn't know if mine was really up to speed at that point so I went with a thin 7 1/4" blade in the table saw since I was more familiar with using it. But now the bandsaw seems to be working fine so tonight I decided to do a little test. My cedar boards are 3 1/2" wide so I cut two pieces of scrap wood to the same width and then cut them into 3/16" strips on the table saw with that thin blade and on the bandsaw. And the results are:

Table saw: 13 full width (3/16") strips. Stacking the strips and measuring I come up with 2 1/4". So that means from the original 3 1/2" width I lost 1 3/4" to the saw.

Bandsaw: 16 full width (3/16") strips. Total thickness of stacked strips is 2 7/8". So only 5/8" lost to the saw.

Three strips per board multiplied by the 30 boards that I bought means that the bandsaw would yield an extra 90 strips. That's more than enough for another canoe! Looks like it's time to rig up infeed/outfeed tables for the bandsaw.

Alan
 
Oh man, I just did the math and realized that I have enough cedar to build 6 boats. Maybe I should have done the math BEFORE I ordered. Guess I better get busy.

Alan
 
I've been a big fan of a band saw for a few decades now... If you looked at the power draw of a table saw vs that of the band saw, you'd be even more convinced to use the band saw.
As an aside, we sometimes need to cut up Inconel 718 sheet stock here at work. The Inconel is too thick for ours shears, and if we try to cut it on the band saw using conventional blades, it takes forever and eats up blades. So we crank up the blade speed to over 1,200 fpm, and friction saw the Inconel. It is amazing how fast it will cut!!
 
First up will be a solo 18.5' long with a roughly 22" water line and a bit of rocker to hopefully keep it a bit more manageable than a C1 proboat in following or rear quartering waves. I don't know how stable it will be, which is why I'd like to slip it in the water before it all gets hard.

Alan

Have you considered building something like a Spencer Extreme? You might be able to sneak you dog in behind you.
 
Have you considered building something like a Spencer Extreme? You might be able to sneak you dog in behind you.

I haven't seen one in person but they look interesting. I don't want the dog behind me though. She wouldn't like it (she wants to look ahead) and I wouldn't like it, especially in such a tender boat, because I need to see what she's doing. It's easy to compensate for her moving or shifting weight when you can see it happening in front of you. It's a totally different feeling to be in the bow of a V1 and have her switch sides behind you. Plus I'm kind of set on building my own design at this point. Really curious to see how it comes out.

Alan
 
Thinking about my lumber and how many strips I can get out of it I realized my numbers on how many boats I can build were off. I forgot to factor in that my cedar is only 12' long. If I had full length lumber I could build 6 boats, but with 12' strips it should be more like 3-4, which is more what I had in mind when I ordered it.

Alan
 
Every night I think I'm going to finalize my design and next thing I know 3 hours has gone by and I'm still fiddling around. I need to just settle on something and build it or I'll drive myself crazy with little tweaks. The program gives lots of numbers and coefficients, most of which I have a loose grasp of, and each tweak changes the numbers and I find myself getting a bit obsessive focusing on them. Problem is I've never done this before so how those numbers feel in real life I don't know. I need to stop trying to perfect it and just build something, at least then I'll have a frame of reference and can make changes from there. This should be pretty close to what I'll be building:


Untitled by Alan Gage, on Flickr


Untitled by Alan Gage, on Flickr

Waterline as shown is for 200 pounds total weight (me and the boat). 18 1/2' long with a little rocker, most of it in the bow. Just under 24" at the water line, about 27" overall, and roughly 21" at the gunwale. Gunwales tucked in front of the seat for easier paddling and flared out at the bow to shed waves and give Sadie some room.

Alan

EDIT: I see in the second picture there is a "phantom line" on the stern side near the widest section of the boat (3 lines nearly on top of each other). One of those doesn't belong and in the software would disappear as soon as I clicked something. Don't know why it does that sometimes. But that computer is shut down for the night and I'm not going to fire it back up just to change it.
 
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Alan,

It looks like you got fairly proficient with that software. Congrats!!
Assuming you keep it upright, it should zip right along. I like to forward flare, I'm sure you will too! Are you going to soften the stems at all? Especially the stern, to lessen any potential stern hook?
 
Alan,
Are you going to soften the stems at all? Especially the stern, to lessen any potential stern hook?

That's one of the things I can't stop messing with, it changes on a daily basis. Softening the stern would help with stern hook as well as give more speed, but at the cost of tracking. I've got similar designs with a more gradual turn at the stern and more stern rocker but I start to worry I'll end up with a boat with a loose rear end. Right now there's about 1 1/2" of rocker in the bow and a little under 3/4" in the stern. That's more than any C1 marathon boat I've paddled (0 rocker). The bow rocker should help with stern hook too as I believe part of the problem with no rocker and sharp entry is the bows tendency to dig in when the stern is picked up by a following wave, making the boat want to pivot around it.

I wish I'd paid more attention to the water line shapes of all the boats I've paddled in the past. It just wasn't something I really noticed. Now I find myself trying to recall how the stems were shaped, how they were flared, and how they handled in different conditions.

How have your solos handled waves from behind and how were they shaped? Does your DY Special have any rocker?

More thinking to do.....

Thanks,

Alan
 
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