On my last pick up of cedar, I grabbed these big boards. I thought that they were cedar, they look exactly the same in this state. However, on the first cut I could smell that they were Pine. Pine is not what I use for canoe building, so I put them aside until I could figure out what to do with them.

Frequenting a Telecaster guitar forum, I came to realize that many builders highly value Pine for bodies. Aha! So that is what I did with them. They are cut down to body size or drying until I need to process them further.

Here you can see my Tele sitting on top for scale.


They take up a lot less space this size, too! Storage i one of the reasons that I cut them down now.

Wow! Has it really been since June 30th that I posted?!

What can I say, its summer. Lots of stuff happening and lots of stuff getting in the way of writing and posting on a blog.

Briefly, here's what I've been up to:

Got the Boreal all packed and shipped to Ft. McMurray Alberta.

Got 6 coats of epoxy on the exterior of the Peterborough, and sanded and varnished the interior 4 coats. Cleaned up the floorboards and keel today, as well as repairing and preparing the old seats for varnish.


Tapered the new guitar to a wedge body shape. The bass side is thinner than the treble, making it easier to place your right arm over. I also got the back made and glued on.


Made Telecaster bridges. I only need one right now, but while I was at it, I seemed to end up with 8 brass bridges and 10 stainless steel ones.

A little ego boost, put my name on the head of the Tele neck. A little gold acrylic paint and some India ink outlines. Used good old carbon paper to transfer the letters. Now I just have to wait for the hardware to arrive. Patience, patience...

I got the Telecaster neck fretted and finsihed carving it.  One coat of varnish reveals this beautiful flame figure.

I wasn't thrilled with how the front turned out.  The grain was "out of focus".  So I sanded the front down to bare wood and started over.  Much better now.  No matter how I photogaph it, its really difficult to photograph well.

Now, I just need to save some more pennies for the hardware...

Got a little more done on my Telecaster guitar. Body cavities are routed, perimeter is routed, body is sanded, stained, and pore filled.

Here with the neck in place to check the fit.


Body before stain.

Base colour to bring out the grain contrast and to deepen the red.

And the final red over coat. Some of the detail of the grain is lost, but that's OK because there will be so much going on with the rest of the hardware, etc, that a too busy look would be distracting.

A little more done on the Telecaster necks. I've got all 9 necks routed for resin reinforced fabric beams, about 1/2" X 1/2". This first one will be Carbon fiber. I think that the others will be straight fiberglass, as I already have plenty of strand prepared from another job.

Step one is to prepare the work area. The mixed resin is spread over the fabric, which is then squeegeed of excess resin. The idea is to have enough resin to coat all the individual strands, but not have them drowning in it! Its the Carbon fiber that will provide the beam strength, not the resin.


The fabric is folded or rolled up, and excess resin is squeezed out. The roll is placed into the routed groove, and pressed into place so that the strands are really packed it. A piece of wood is clamped over top to held it all as flat as possible. The wood has packing tape on it to act as a mold release.

The resin is left to cure overnight. No point in rushing it, just work the cure time into your schedule. The wood caul is removed and this is the result. A little clean up sanding...

...and this is the result. The neck is ready to receive the fingerboard now. Once that is one, then final shaping and fret work is left.

Canvassing day!

Sometimes it feels like it never comes. This is one of my favourite steps in the canoe repair/building process. After all that taking apart and dusty, noisy work, finally some relaxing, clean work where you feel like you've really gotten something done.

I've got two canoes to canvas today: the 100 year old Chestnut and the 30 year old Chestnut PAL that I just finished doing the repair work on.

After I get the shop arranged for the canvassing, the canvas clamps are hung, and the canvas is pre-stretched. You can't see it from this photo, but the canvas is folded lengthwise with the open side on top, then, after the tension is released, the canoe is placed inside.

The blue pole is used to press the ends down into the bottom of the canvas fold. I wish that I had these extending poles years ago! They are really great to have. Notice the foam triangle in the end that the poles press against. There is also a plywood plate on the ceiling.


Two canoes done today! Tomorrow the get the filler applied. Then they wait for the filler to cure. I don't get a break, though. While the filler cures I will be making a new canoe seat for the old chestnut, caning it, sanding the trim, getting it on, starting the varnish for the trim...


My Telecaster project is moving along, too. I managed to get the necks routed to finish profile and routed for the reinforcement. I also played around with stain, trying to get just the right look for the wood that I'm using.

The photo doesn't show the colour very faithfully, but I'm after a deep wine red which shows the grain of the curly maple that I'm using on the guitar body face. This sample of three variations on red, is just one of the samples that I tried.

An update about my electric guitar project. I've decided that I'll be building a Telecaster style. Telecaster were the first real production electric guitar put out by Fender. They developed out of the Esquire, which had just the bridge pick up, and were originally called the Broadcaster. The name had to be changed because Gretsch was already using it for one of their products.

I found a great forum dedicated to the Telecaster here: http://www.tdpri.com/forum/index.php

So, being undecided about exactly how I want the guitar to look, I decided that I'd just build a bunch of components so that I can try bunch of approaches. Its far easier to make some of these parts in batch runs than it is to do just one a time. Set up time is far more time consuming than actually doing the work. This way I'll have seasoned bodies and necks ready for when I need them

Here, you can see my master template sitting on a pile of Pine body blanks. Alder and Southern "Swamp" Ash are the traditional woods, but Pine was used on the early guitars and is seeing a renaissance with some builders these days.

Here are four body blanks of Elm

In addition to preparing some body blanks, I've been developing the drawings, templates, and some of the jigs. Oh, and doing lots of reading, research, and parts sourcing!