Seat location Bell Wildfire solo

[John B]

Hey,
I recently bought a Bell Wildfire in royalex. It came with a kneeling thwart, but I'd like to install a nice contoured seat with webbing (homemade conk).

Can anyone help me locate the correct position for the seat?

Pseudonym, doing a resto-mod on this site, said the correct seat location was 3" aft of center. This is very different from the kneeling thwart in mine making me question the location.

There are three sets of holes in my gunnels set 10" aft of center (measured from ends corresponds with thwarts 27" fore and aft, and with a sharp line scribed on the gunnel. (Image below.). The holes are 2.5 inches on center, making the distance between the furthest 5" which is much less than the typical 8 or 10" on center holes for most seats.

I don't want to start drilling random holes in the gunnels!

Any help would be much appreciated.

John in Austin,TX

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

Hulls have different shapes, different centers of buoyancy, different centers of lateral resistance, different size and shape paddlers, and hence different "ideal" solo seat locations.

Forget inches. Identify your "ideal" solo seat location via empirical experimentation. That is, sit or kneel in your canoe—whichever you do most of the time—and trim your canoe level or slightly bow light, whichever you consider ideal.

How? Two ways. For both, use a temporary seat such as a milk crate that you can slide fore and aft. Sit on or kneel off it.

1. Have someone else, a spotter, looking at you from the side. Move the temporary seat fore and aft until your spotter says the hull is in level trim or slightly bow light.

2. Pour some water on the bottom and move the temporary seat fore and aft until the water puddles is in the longitudinal center of the canoe—i.e., level trim—or slightly behind the longitudinal center—i.e., slightly bow light trim. You could also use a big bubble level longitudinally centered in the canoe, if you can see the bubble from your seat.

When you are in the trim you consider ideal, mark where the front edge of your movable seat is. Put the front edge of your permanent seat in the same place.

Of course, when you put anything at all in the canoe, gear or a dog or whatever, it will go out of "ideal" trim and you will have to re-trim with your load by feel. This could suggest that there is really no exactly "ideal" place for your solo seat unless you always paddle empty, or unless you determined your solo seat location by an exact and unchanging gear load in the canoe along with your body.

 

[John B]

Hi Glen,
Thank you for giving me some instruction on the empirical methods. I had been thinking along these lines (a little water in bottom, bubble level, etc. but I was not sure this was the right way to go. Milk crate is a great idea.

FLY, my plan is to attempt to adapt a sliding seat design from Mike's Caper and front seat of late Egret models. In no way can I come close to Mike's woodworking and design skills, but I think can steal his design and make a knockoff.

john