Contact me at: rrcp@mts.net or by phone 204.878.2524

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Lots of stuff goes on in this shop, located in Lorette, Manitoba.

Primarily it's the building and repair of classic wood & canvas canoes, and the making of premium canoe paddles. I also do custom boat building, composite fabrication, and special projects. A growing passion of mine is the making of classical guitars, I'll post about that, too.


I want to be able to share with my clients the progress of their commissioned work. Later I started thinking that there might be other people who are interested in what goes on inside a wooden canoe shop operated by an artist and a recovering teacher.

If you have any questions please feel free to contact me by email, phone, or by post. My mailing address is:

Red River Canoe & Paddle
24249 River Rd
Lorette, Manitoba
Canada
R5K 0Z6




Sunday 14 December 2008

Now that they nasty business of stripping out the old varnish is done, I can turn myself to the task of repairing the woodwork. First step is to identify all the broke ribs. Given that this is a rare and historic 100 year old (approximate age) Chestnut canoe, I feel that it is important to maintain it as original as possible. Therefore, I am going to use the back of the rib repair technique on all of the broken ribs, even ones which normally would be replaced. This ensures that the entire canoe maintains its historic look and feel.

To repair rins this way, first the planking in the affected area needs to be removed. As you can see, there are a lot of rib fractures. If I were to replace all these ribs, what of the original canoe would be left?And these aren't all of them, either.



Next step, tomorrow, is to cut out slots across the fracture, along the length of the rib. Into this slot I will glue new wood. I'll use epoxy for this.

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