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 19 October 2011

I'vre been milling ribs and planking for the last 3 or four days. Its a frustrating puzzle at times, trying to get the most yield and best cuts fro the wood available. White Cedar does not come into my shop in uniform dimensions, nor in uniform quality. There are a lot different sizes, some with knots, some with checking. It is disheartening to pick up a big piece of cedar only to examine it and find knots distributed all over it, or checks that go right through it, rendering the wood almost unuseable.

Occassionally, though, you get a piece like this!

3 1/2" thick, 17" wide, and almost 8' long of clear wood with no apparent checking. THIS is a high yield piece of wood. I got a lot of planking cut from this piece with almost zero waste. I hate wasting wood, it is disrespectful.



Not all of this pile was from the piece shown above, but a good portion was. This is the product of my cutting efforts, here shown rough sawn.




And here thicknessed to its final 5/32" dimension. Time now to group it by grain and colour type, and to clean up the shop.

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