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




Thursday, 10 June 2010

Looks like it has been awhile since I posted to this build. Funny, it doesn't feel all that long...

One of the nice things about smaller canoes is that you don't need nearly as much lumber!

All the planking is cut. I set the width of the new planking to the Peterborough/Chestnut width of 2 3/4". As so many of the repairs that I do are on those canoes its nice to just pull some planking out of some prepared stock. Also, narrower planking leaves smaller gaps when it eventually shrinks.

I cut the planking on the bandsaw and then run it through the thickness planer. My planer leaves a very nice surface on the wood, but not quite good enough for varnish, so I run one face over the belt sander at 150 grit. I've tried finer but its not really worthwhile.

Planking sure can take awhile. Nothing out of the ordinary here. I do wish that I could build enough of each model before I forget how I decided to set up the planking pattern between the gore planking and the gunnel. Every model is slightly different in how the planks run and every time it feels like its my first time building that canoe!








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