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 2 October 2012

Today the first stave of the viola da gamba is bent. 6 more pieces to go!

Yes, they really were built this way. The next two are the tricky ones as they have to be bent with a twist in them. I'm going to leave them like this to settle and hold their shape before jointing the edges and gluing them together. I'll have to check for springback as I don't want to build stress into the instrument's top.

The center is bent first, then the next two which continue the belly. The 3rd & 4th are basically flat. This won't quite make the full top, I'll have to add some wings for the very edge.

Once this is all assembled I can establish a nice flat bottom edge for gluing the top to the sides, called the "garland". Then I can carve it into nice flowing curves. The advantage of this method over carving regular violin family tops is that all of the grain follows the surface. These tops can be made thinner for the same stiffness. So I've read!

OH! That scorching is typical! Nothing to be alarmed at. Its tough going bending 1cm thick spruce on the hot pipe. It'll carve out.


 
 
 
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1 comment:

flatland family said...

I think we can safely say that this instrument will be well worth the wait - and the work. Very cool.