Educate Me, Help Identify A Strange Canoe

[Larry650]

This old canoe appears to have it's wood strips arranged 90 degrees off the norm. How can this be strong?
https://phoenix.craigslist.org/nph/a...155730235.html

 

[memaquay]

I dunno what it is, but its pretty cool. Looks a lot like an indigenous canoe, in term of shape. Should be strong enough with the fiberglass. Must have steamed the strips when applying them, and kind of looks like they built it in two halves. Never seen any thing like it!

 

[Canotrouge]

I wonder if it is a “laminated” canoe, where the strips
on the inside and the one on the outside are staggered... they use to make motor boat and sail boat like that, I think they were hot molded and then cured in an “oven”...https://youtu.be/X6hgRQuvg60

 

[Larry650]

You might be on to something there. Maybe it once had an outer skin which has been peeled away by a previous owner. I don't see outwalls on it, so maybe the outer skin is gone.

 

[scoutergriz]

You might be on to something there. Maybe it once had an outer skin which has been peeled away by a previous owner. I don't see outwalls on it, so maybe the outer skin is gone.

I think that is the outer skin... if you zoom in you can see that the inner strips are narrower than the outer, and that the hull at the gunwale line is an easy 3/4" thick. it looks like the gunwale is actually between the layers, and screwed to longitudinal strips in the centre.

 

[ppine]

Look like an old homemade canoe. Interesting, but a terrible design.

 

[Guest]

I'm trying to imagine what would happen if that canoe were pinned amidships.

 

[Boatman53]

It’s a molded plywood boat. Not a very pretty one to my eyes. There were several manufacturers Haskell canoes made a molded plywood boat in the 1920’s,
Dunphy Boat company made molded plywood runabouts and I thought canoes but couldn’t find any. They are actually three layers of wood veneers. One of my favorite molded canoes were made by the Willits Brothers canoe company. There’s were two layers of wood with canvas between the layers. I would love to own one of them.
Jim

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

Northern Arizona is such a fertile area for strip canoeing.

Here's another photo:



It's interesting and certainly different and I'd like to try paddling it, but quite ugly to me. Look at those radically bubbled and tumblehomed sides -- early Yost gone wild. The seats don't look original and, from the extra holes, seem to have been moved. I suppose someone will buy anything, but I wouldn't take it for free.

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

It’s a molded plywood boat. Not a very pretty one to my eyes. There were several manufacturers Haskell canoes made a molded plywood boat in the 1920’s,

 

[memaquay]

Found an article on Haskell canoes. A description: The finished product had a “classic” Ojibway-type birch bark canoe profile with bows that swept upward, 34 inches wide at center, 13 inches deep, giving a large hauling capacity, and gently rounded bottom with slight tumblehome.

Here's two historical shots of Anishinabeg canoes from roughly my area.

They don't seem to resemble the plywood boiler very much. In my mind, the shape more closely resembles the traditional canoes of the Miꞌgmaq people from my old stomping grounds in Nova Scotia.

Could it be though, that the Haskell canoe was built like that because that was the only form it could take once the boiled wood was pressed? Then they claimed indigenous design to give it some legitimacy?

Could it be that Haskell Canoes were the founders of Fake News?

 

[Robin]

Here's me (in the bow) and my two brothers circa 1955 in a molded plywood 16' "Plycraft" canoe made in Winnipeg, Manioba. I still have the bow section and stern section, the rest had rotted out. Going to make book shelves out of them someday.

Muskrat Lake, Cobden, Ontario, Canada (back when they let us in)