This Chestnut has the new gunnels on, and they are being sanded for varnish. The seats are removed to facilitate this, and to make it easier to sand and varnish them as well. First coat of paint is on and sanded. The keel has been straightened, cleaned of peeling paint, and epoxy coated prior to being reinstalled.

Time for the big reveal!

First, here is the new bow seat looking suitable old. Not really old, but it does look like it belongs.


And the old stern seat for comparison. Its rare to find old cane seats without broken cane, this one is excellent.

A little peak at the stern deck looking pretty under lots of new varnish. I took a tracing pattern off of this deck and compared it to a newer deck, it is practically identical.


A nice feature of the old decks is the significant undercut which follows the crowning of the top of the deck.


And, finally, the long shot showing the old girl all finished and ready for the water.

A couple of shots of the old stern seat, for the record.

Seat caning time. There is only the stern seat that came with this canoe, so I had to make a new bow seat, and it had to look a little old, not brand new. So I applied some stain, did a little sanding so that it wasn't to uniform, and varnished it.

The cane come in a large bundle of about 1000 lineal feet.

Untied it gets a bit unruly, but it's folded and tied at the fold. If you do any caning yourself, never, ever, cut loose that last tie our you have on giant, tangled, mess.


Take one strand at a time and coil it. This makes it easier to manage without getting tangles, as well as making it easier for soaking. Soak the cane in water fo about 20-30 minutes. the moisture makes it more supple. Don't soak it much longer or you risk it going grey. Keep it moist by placing all your cane in a Ziploc bag. It can keep in there all day, or longer, if need be.


I won't go into all the details of caning, that info is available elsewhere, but I want to show one detail that I feel is important. Traditionally, the holes are 3/16", but with all the strands that pass through, it gets pretty tight getting the last ones through! So I drill them to 1/4", which helps. They are on 3/4" centers. I also put a slight bevel on the edges bu putting my coutersink cutter on the drill bit. This relieves the sharp corner, hopefully prolonging the life of the cane strands.


The finished result. I had to make a choice on this seat. The cane on the stern seat, w hil in good condition, wasn't woven quite right. Almost, but there were some strands that just weren't in the right place. So, do I copy the poor weaving of the original, or make it correct? I made it correct. Nobody else will notice this detail. It doesnt take a lot more effort to do something correctly.

Time to go green! Two coats of green paint on the old Chestnut and she's looking like this. Time for a good sanding and two more coats. I'll be installing the stem band today, and the new bow seat is ready for caning.

Get the paint done, the stem bands on, the seats and thwarts in and she's all finished up and ready for the water!

This old Chestnut has some interesting screws.  Slot head, obviously (slot heads are an abomination), but what distinguishes these screws are the wide, shallow "oval" head.

A view of the bow deck  You can see the repaired inner gunnels,  not a perfect colour match, but close.

Two coats of varnish on the gunnels.  Looking a lot better than when I started.  Two more coats of varnish to go.  The filler is just about ready for paint.

I have a new bow seat to make today, and new stem bands to prepare and install.

Got the gunnels on the old Chestnut. Now its time for sanding and varnishing. You can see in this photos the old wood on the right, and the results of the first sanding on the left. I have it all sanded now, and it looks great, but no photo today.

Long view prior to sanding.

A little reminder about how far this canoe has come. Here is the before and after of old varnish stripping, sanding, and first coat of varnish.

Time to sand out the interior of the 100 year old chestnut. Oh joy! You can see on the left the condition of the wood after being stripped. the wood on the right is after the first round of sanding. Much cleaner. There is still more sanding left to be done.


The new planking requires some staining so that after varnishing it all blends together. SOme experimenting is needed to get the right hue. Here you can see some of the stain applied. Yes, it looks a LOT darker, but its a water based aniline dye that hasn't yet dried. The goal is to have it blend together after the varnish is all done.

Interior of the Chestnut showing some of the new planking with stain applied, and dried. I'm just about to start varnishing.

This is what one coat of varnish does ot the canoe. And just in case there was any doubt about that stain, this is the same section of the canoe as shown in the previous photo.

Here's the long shot. I'll have to post a photo showing the before and after.

The stem and gunnel tips on the old Chestnut were failing. These spots are always prone to rot and just wear and tear. All in all, though, this 100 year old canoe is in great shape.

So, to do this, the planking in the stem tip area has to be removed to provide access. Then the Ash stem is cut down, the cut is made at an angle so that the new wood can be glued on using a scarph joint. The same for the gunnel ends. I always pre-fit the mortise and tenon joint that Chestnut used. Its a lot easier to shape the wood before gluing it in place, than after. In the early days of my work, I shaped the wood in place, but this way I can get all the pieces shaped and in place in one shot.

Epoxy is used as an adhesive for its waterproof capacity as well as its ability to bridge any small gaps that may be present in the joinery. The new wood is treated with boiled linseed oil prior to closing it back up with planking.

The new Spruce is very white compared to the old Spruce. It will need some staining to get a better colour match before varnishing. The same thing will need to be done to the new planking that is going in today.

A couple of the ribs ends had deteriorated quite badly, so they needed a splice as well.

Its not very apparent from these photos, but the deck is significantly crowned, and this crowning is carried over to the gunnels.


Old and new canoes, side by side. I wonder what shape that Mad River canoe will be like when its 100 years old? And who will be caring for it? And will they want to bother?

Here"s the "How-to" of doing a back side rib repair. As I've already got the slots cut, the next step is to prepare the splint material. I used White Cedar as it has the same structural properties as the original rib wood. Its important to prepare them quite thin, maybe 2mm maximum. Thicker than that and the splint will not conform to the rib shape, thinner and it won't have any ability to overcome any distortions that the fractures create in the old rib. 3 splints should be enough for each rib repair.

There are several ribbands held in place behind the ribs. These serve to generate some continuity of shape in the repaired ribs. Once the rib repairs are done and the epoxy cures, the shape is set forever, so we need to ensure that it sets to the correct, fair, shape of the canoe.

Epoxy is used for this repair as it is completely waterproof, strong, and with the proper fillers, has excellent gap filling properties. Its very difficult to achieve perfect joinery in this type of task, so everything that helps is used.


The splints are started to be clamped in place. Also not the stringer clamped in place along the keel line. There was a lot of planking removed for this operation, including the planking along the keel line. With that gone there is no structure left there to keep the canoe shape from distorting; the spaces between each rib can be reduced and made permanent if not attended to.

Some of the broken ribs had multiple fractures, so long repair had to be done.

Clamps! Lots and lots of clamps are needed for this job. The splints don't need to be clamped in super tight, but snug enough to be held in position well. Too often, beginners over clamp epoxy glued joints, squeezing out the epoxy and starving the glue joint.

I only had enough clamps to do half of the rib repairs at one time. So this job had to be done over two days. Its all done now, so the next task is to shape the splints down to the curve of the original rib, and then start putting all the removed planking back. Well done, this repair will be almost as strong as a new rib. I say almost because I haven't had the nerve to stress test the repaired rib!

I finished cutting the slots and preparing the material for rib repair.


Quite a lot of planking had to be removed for the work but almost all of it is in good enough condition to go back on. If there were a number of rib breaks do attend to under one run of planking, I took off the whole piece instead of cutting a bunch of small sections out. Some ribs had multiple fractures, so they require a longer splint. When gluing in the splints, its important to not distort the shape of the ribs. You'll see how that is done when I post the pictures of that stage.


I ran out of time to glue in the repair material, today. That will be tomorrow's job. It's not something to be rushed through. Once the epoxy sets, the new wood will be permanently bonded to the old rib and ready to be shaped smooth the the original contour. Then the planking can be put back on the canoe.

What's great about this method is that the strength of the rib is restored and the interior of the canoe retains all of its original character.

Now that they nasty business of stripping out the old varnish is done, I can turn myself to the task of repairing the woodwork. First step is to identify all the broke ribs. Given that this is a rare and historic 100 year old (approximate age) Chestnut canoe, I feel that it is important to maintain it as original as possible. Therefore, I am going to use the back of the rib repair technique on all of the broken ribs, even ones which normally would be replaced. This ensures that the entire canoe maintains its historic look and feel.

To repair rins this way, first the planking in the affected area needs to be removed. As you can see, there are a lot of rib fractures. If I were to replace all these ribs, what of the original canoe would be left?And these aren't all of them, either.



Next step, tomorrow, is to cut out slots across the fracture, along the length of the rib. Into this slot I will glue new wood. I'll use epoxy for this.

While it may seem that work has been going slowly, I've been busy. I had to take a few days off to continue work on my basement. I had gutted and rebuilt the entire basement, mostly to deal with some mould problems that were the result of less than great original construction. The last major portion of the rebuild was to remove and replace the stairs. The original builders did not leave me much headroom, so it took some clever figuring to get the best fit for good headroom and tread/riser size.

The old stairs were not well built, and on top of that, they were built right up to the cement wall, leaving no room for the insulted new wall to be built. So, to build the new stairs, I had to move them about 8" over, which meant that the floor/ceiling had to be cut. and on and on it went.

Now that that portion of work is under control, I am bale to get back to work in the shop. As the NRC is finished, I was able to put up some shelving to help deal with the eternal storage crisis that plagues every small shop. I also built a room air filter which cleans airborne dust by circulating the room air through a stack of furnace filter. I'll post photos of that when Its completed. Its close now...

I pulled the old Chestnut back into the shop to start stripping the old varnish. This is a task that you need to steel yourself up to. Wearing the vapour mask to deal with the fumes, and the gloves, and the tedium. There is no way around it, just do it.

Here is the before shot. Tools all at the ready: stripper, putty knife, brush, tin cans, mask, gloves, and plenty of coarse steel wool. I'd rather be doing this outside, but its December in Manitoba. I might be crazy, but I'm not stupid.

You can see how dark the old varnish is compared to the stripped portion

And finally a shot looking along the canoe showing all that remains to be done tomorrow. At some point, even with a vapour mask, you've just had enough and have to call it quits. I've stripped out plenty of canoes, If I never do another one, my life will not be lacking. I'm sure that there will be more...there always are.

An ancient Chestnut

While the filler is curing on the new canoe, it gives me a chance to get a few other things done.

First, I made the outwales, the keel, and the outer stem for the stern. I still have the transom cap and the seats to make, but that will go pretty easy.

I brought in on of the more interesting restoration jobs to come my way. Its taken awhile to get to this canoe, its been here almost 1 year! This is an early era Chestnut. I'm not sure of the exact date of its building, but I did see one almost exactly like it in the Canadian Canoe Museum in Peterborough. That one dated form 1910.


For such an old canoe, this one is in really quite remarkable shape. Aside from some wear and tear on the gunwale ends, there are quite a few broken ribs, most are just fractures. I'll be using the back of the rib repair technique on all of these as I feel that for this canoe in particular, it is very important to preserve the original character as much as possible. new ribs, even when well matched to the old wood, still look like new wood.

These old Chestnuts have a particular treatment for the decks. While the deck sahpe is the classic heart shape found on many older Chestnuts, it is heavily crowned and undercut at the exposed edge. This crowning is carried over to the gunnels such that is presents a continuous sweep across, from outer gunnel to outer gunnel.

Even though the trim is weathered a uniform grey, I'm pretty sure that the decks are Maple and that the gunnels are Spruce.

So, I've gotten the gunnel and keel screws out so far. These old canoes had slot headed screws used in their construction. I hate slot headed screws-they are an abomination!

Tomorrows job is to remove the stems and the keel so that I can get the old canvas off. The risk now is that the air in the shop is drying rapidly as winter sets in. The planking is at risk of shrinking more than I'd like.

I really need to buy a humidifier...

I'll post some more detail photos of this interesting canoe as I continue to work on it. I'm also planning on documenting it for posterity. This will include taking the lines off it, lofting them up to full scale plans, and making proper drawings of all the trim details.