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




Wednesday 1 September 2010

My children attend Manitoba Pioneer Camp and I pay for their fees in an exchange of services. Basically, I take in their "basket case" wood canoes, the ones that no one else dares work on, fix them up good, and get the canoes back to camp.

This time I am working on a Peterborough low end Champlain. This is the only one that MPC has and it is a favourite of many paddlers. A few years ago it had the misfortune of being blown off of the canoe rack and was impaled upon the next rack. The gunnels were smashed, as well as four ribs, a bunch of planking, and, obviously, the canvas.

While I am at it, this deck had to go. While the work was reasonably done, it is completely inaccurate for a Peterborough.

There were a bunch of gunnel repairs awaiting...

So I decided to make life simpler, to do a better job, and to just replace the inner gunnels altogether.

To get that upturn of the sheer near the ends it is necessary to steam bend the gunnels first.

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