Peterborough Model 1492, The Champlain

[Mihun09]

Christy went out and found a new project the other night. Considering I did not go with her to look, I will leave it to her to detail the pursuit of this old canoe.

Having it in the shop now we know it is a Peterborough Champlain, Model 1492. Although we originally saw the ghost of the deck decal, with a bit of elbow grease and spit, Christy managed to bring the model number up on the stem where originally only one number was barely visible. It certainly helps to know where to look. The Champlain is 16 foot long, 34" wide and 12" deep. She has a quick upsweep at the ends and is reminiscent of Chestnuts in the decks and skinny and wide last cant rib. The Dragonfly site says this was available in 1956, so we will peg it at 60 years old this year.

It has 1 1/2" wide ribs spaced 1 1/2" apart. The slat seats are mostly original, the drops certainly are as is most of the hardware. It is hogged in the middle as there are 10 adjacent broken ribs there. It could be a tad of a chore to get the shape back in correctly but we will do our best. The inwales need some help, one side has several breaks in it, the other just one or two. Outwales are mostly intact. Not sure if we can save them until we start taking it apart. Someone had the clever idea to pound nails vertically into one inwale and one outwale, likely to fasten a cover, tarp perhaps, since the boat was stored outside the last decade or so.

 

[Iskweo]

Since I am the buyer, I cruise kijiji frequently to see what pops up. I have found a lot of boats that way. This one was a short 8 km up the road from me. The fellow that had it was rather picky about who he would sell it to. Most people wanted to make shelves out of it. Ughhhh that is going around again. Anyway when I said that we restore them he was all ears and I got first crack at it.

I almost took a pass. It is a bit on the rough side and I was not wanting to spend the money he was looking for. I actually told him I would take it and then about 5 minutes later declined. He offered it to me at a price that I could not pass though so here it is. I will make it up by getting him to so some welding for me and that will get him the extra money. He could have cut it in half and sold the shelves and gotten three times what I paid him.

In the end we loaded her on the truck and with a pallet holding the back end up I scuttled off along some gravel roads to get home without doing the highway. After we got it in the garage today and started investigating we found the model numbers and a few other clues. I really like being able to deduce the age and maker on these old UFO's.

One thing that I found interesting is how tight the planking is...no gap at all. It's kind of wide too. We also found steel tacks holding canvas remnants on under the outers, and brass tacks under the stem bands. No staples. The steel tacks suggest a wartime repair when brass was hard to come by.

Hopefully this one wont take long.

Christy

 

[Mihun09]

No Title

There are worse ways to spend a couple of hours on a Friday afternoon other than stripping a new project. I believe it is older than the mid 1950's but have no way to prove it yet. Fasteners could provide clues though. For a Canadian built boat it has all slotted screws which are either brass or brass plated steel and the mix of steel and brass tacks, but the brass stem bands suggest an earlier build date.

My Chestnut Fox which we pegged for the 1960's had aluminum stem bands.

Once done we can sell it to Canot.

 

[blackfly]

This will be a nice project. What do you do with these old canoes once you have restored them?

 

[Mihun09]

Initially the idea was to keep and use them, did that with the first project, a 15 foot Bastien Bros, but sold that. Next up was a 14 foot Chestnut, used it on a couple of trips then sold it last year. The Canadian I finished a couple years ago never saw the water with us, and we sold that last year. Christy's Tremblay sold recently, that was her heart attack recovery project which took her 18 months to complete. The other one was Red's Tremblay which we returned to him a couple years ago.

What was supposed to be a one boat project has turned into many boats over the past 5 years and I have the philosophy that if we don't use them we don't need them, so they get sent down the road for someone else's pleasure. Presently we have no finished w/c canoes but many projects. This Pete should go quickly enough, the 100 year old Morris is a longer term project as is the 98 year old Penobscot, both which we plan to keep but well, you never know.

So we have done 5 boats in 5 years with 4 needing work now. If only I didn't need a day job I could get them done faster and actually enjoy working for a living.

 

[Iskweo]

They are like a savings account. You spend money in little bits and bites on them and once they are done you sell them and recover it all in one lump sum. In the meantime you have a fun hobby and possibly some really cool canoes to use. It helps to fill some long winter days when it is too cold outside to do much.

And of course they are just so pretty when they are done....how can I resist...lol.

Christy

 

[Mihun09]

Hey Blackfly, if you ever wanna come out to the house and see what we are up to with this boat and the others, just let us know. I'm usually always home on weekends since I'm a hermit.

Karin

 

[Mihun09]

No Title

So, it turns out we may need to replace both inwales completely. On the one side is a couple of breaks which I would scarf in new wood, both at bolt holes. The other side, some idiot decided to drive nails straight down through vertically every 6" or so, the length of the boat. The outwale on the opposite side had the same row of nails and I think they had fastened a tarp or plastic over the boat to help protect it, but in doing so, created a world of hurt to repair. There is also horizontal cracking following the grain, which I had on the Canadian and could fix by soaking with epoxy, by heating the crack, laying in the epoxy and allowing the rail to cool and it draws the epoxy into the space, and repeating until it fills up the voids.
The other factor is the tips need to be replaced anyway due to the usual rot, 3-4 inches on one end, 12 inches on the other, so it may just be better to replace them entirely.

I did some sanding today and started pulling every other rib that needs replacement. Keeps me out of trouble.

 

[Robin]

At first I thought installing new inwales was a job best left for someone with lots more experience than me. I had visions of working fast, lots of nerve racking pressure, the whole canoe springing apart as soon as they where removed, maybe even loosing the true shape of the canoe forever.

After my first attempt under the tutelage of Schuyler Thomson, all my fears disappeared and I'm now a firm believer in replacing them if they are weak, cracked or a few too many old repairs. The canoe takes on a new look with them.

My Chestnut Pal with new inwales. The ring nails where the rib ends where nailed to the inwales had started to give out, the holes in the inwales where the seats and thawarts where had started to weaken.

 

[Murat V]

Nice find. Could those vertical nail holes on the inwale & outwale be from an attempt to add decorative top rails and make it look like a closed gunnel boat? Seems ludicrous to nail vertically every 6" for any other reason.

Not sure if you've seen this nifty writeup on the history of the various Champlain models...
http://wwwbuckhorncanoes.blogspot.ca/2015/01/the-peterborough-canoe-co-models-high.html

 

[Iskweo]

Yes I did see Dick Perssons blog about the Champlains. The production dates and the preponderance of steel tacks leads me to believe we have a wartime boat. Apparently this one is also a Chestnut Pal by another name. Supposedly they were made at chestnut on the Pal forms and rebranded as Petes. Regardless, it is a nice shape and it looks like we should just go ahead and put new inwales in it. There is some other work that needs to be done at that time too. We will use our time honoured method of soaking new inwales and clamping them under the existing ones to dry and form the shape. Quick in and out and it will be all over.
It's looking like a busy summer in the boat building department.

Christy

 

[blackfly]

Hey Blackfly, if you ever wanna come out to the house and see what we are up to with this boat and the others, just let us know. I'm usually always home on weekends since I'm a hermit.

Karin

Thank you Karin - I will take you up on that! Likewise, feel free to visit over a coffee in Winnipeg next time you're in town and we can talk canoeing. My wife and I just came back from the ELA where we had nice warm sunny spring days (water is still a little cold for swimming though).

 

[Mihun09]

No Title

Must be coming up on Winter since we are back to the boats.

This one needs the inwales replaced and last weekend we picked up a 16 foot stick of D Fir for that purpose. It is about the only thing readily available to us with the lengths we need. We ripped and machined them then put them in the trough to soak since Sunday night. Today I booked the afternoon off work since it is dead at the moment and installed the first side. There will be clearance issues at the ends so I will need to do the second one tomorrow.

Normally we would sling them under the existing rails but in this case there was no way the new one would replicate the quick upturn at the ends, so I am doing them beside instead, hoping it will work. I screwed battens across the top of the old inwales mainly at the curves so they will take on the same shape.

The idea is, we head out Saturday on a 15 day whirlwind road trip to Southern Ontario to visit family and pick up two more boats, so, while we are away they can sit and dry and hopefully keep the shape better. We'll be in Stouffville a couple days, Wainfleet a couple days and to pick up a Y-Stern, then off to London to pick up a 15' Bastien Bros, then back home. Doing the Superior drive around on the way there, then the upper run on the way back.