Well, I finally have some time to get back to posting entries! Only trouble is I have forgotten where I was at in the story, so it took awhile to back track.

There was an interesting request for the Peterborough Lake Queen. This canoe originally belonged to the parents of the present day owner and she wanted to set the canoe up as a working memorial using a little of their cremation ashes. I made a recess in the bottom of the center thwart and sealed everything in with resin.

A close up of the Ashes.


The bow deck all sanded and ready for varnish.

A full shot of the canoe with the trim ready for varnish.

Wow, it been a whole month since my last post to the blog! I know, its summer, there is a lot going on and family time is essential.

Rest assured that I have been busy with work, and still taking photos of what's been going on in the shop. I'll have LOTS to share when I get enough time at the computer to sit and post.

The Peterborough Lake Queen that I was working on last year is finally back on track. The client ran into some unexpected expenses and had to put the canoe on hold. Now that the Kildonan is done and the Esprit is just about done, its time to get a move on with this one.

The gunnels need to be sanded down to bare wood and the old thwart is seriously in the way. If the bolts had been bronze or brass it would have been an easy thing to remove the four bolts. As the were steel, well, the ravages of time kept the nuts on pretty tight.

I've run into this situation a number of times so I have a repertoire solutions. What worked this time was to take the side-cutters and grab the head of the bolt and twist it enough so that I can use the next tool.

Which happen to be vise-grips. Its hard to hold the side-cutters tight enough to spin the stubborn bolt out, these hold on tighter!

And, of course, the gunnel is broken...

So another gunnel repair. Same story as on the recently repaired Kildonan gunnel.

The old Kildonan is done and ready for pick-up. The client is doing all of the painting and varnishing so that is saving me a lots of time!

Here it is before I bolt the seats and thwarts back in, as well as the stem bands.

And a close up of the bow deck showing the aluminum name plate. The Decks are maple

Painting always gives me grief.

Not because it is so difficult to do, but because the the feeling that the customer is always expecting a flawless finish, perfectly smooth and super shiny. I am moving more and more towards providing a consistently very good paint job and not getting hung on "perfect". I just need to ensure that the client is expecting the same as what I will deliver.

Anyway, back to the boat at hand!

I give the dried filler a basic sanding and then apply the first coat. I sand and paint three coats of paint before I work on the final coats. If all goes well then four coats will be enough. Sometimes I need five. More costs extra.

This canoe will be the traditional Chestnut green. I had a formula worked out for this colour, but the company, ICI, that made the tint base discontinued that paint base, so out the window it goes. I had to start all over. Fortunately the paint company that I go to has an excellent colour service and they came up with an excellent match. The new paint base is from Para. You can see the matched paint chip taped to the end of my sample.

My sample was from an original can of paint from Chestnut, so I can say with absolute certainty that this is the exact colour that Chestnut used.

Here's a shot of the Esprit canoe before and after first coat of paint. Just a little more paint, some varnish on the trim, and the metal bits to go. Almost done!


I had some time to work on the carving for the viola da gamba. I had the design pretty much worked out but had a little tweaking to do. So after the drawing was finalized I taped it in position and used carbon paper to transfer it to the wood. After that is done the lines need to be incised and then the background is cut away.



After getting a little of the background carving done I can testify that this is going to be a LOT of work! Slow, delicate work.

I've been experimenting with something called Natural Planted Tank aquarium keeping. I've keep aquariums since I was young and have always been interested in keeping plants. NPT is a new approach for me utilizing soil under the gravel and various other low tech approaches.

http://www.aquaticplantcentral.com/forumapc/index.php is a great place to go for info.

Day one. Cloudy water.

After one week the water is clearere and everything is settling down.

After two weeks the water is pretty clear and the plants are starting to show new growth.

A put in a few helpers. I scooped some of these (which I'm pretty sure are) Great Pond Snails (Lymnaea stagnalis) out of the river out back of my place. They tirelessly scour all of the surfaces. And they breed prolifically! Good new for me is that when I have too many I'll just throw them back into the river.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lymnaea_stagnalis

I also bought some of these freshwater shrimp to help clean. This is my first time keeping shrimp. neocaridina heteropa var. yellow