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




Tuesday 25 January 2011

While the shop is set up for lutherie I am finally getting to the repair of my wife's 200 year old 'cello. This old instrument is a Czech made copy of a large body Amati 'cello.

Before work commences...

A real problem area is the lower bout. There is some cracking in the wood, the belly and back plate are experiencing chronic glue failure, and this particular section is actually bending outwards.

With the top off I can examine the 'cello in its present state. Oh my...

It appears to have at least three sessions of work done previously. I judge this by the apparent age of the different repairs. This would help explain the chronic glue failures, each time the top was removed new glue was applied over the old glue. You can do this with Hot Hide glue, but as the glue builds up the surface areas tend to get smaller. Pretty soon you have very little glue holding it all together. This is supported in my mind as many places required very little effort open the glue joint. Too little effort.

There were some odd repairs done over the years...what is up with that multi-colour fabric?

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