One of my clients, the fellow who is ordering the oars shown in an earlier post from February, sent me a DVD of the canoe races held in Cross Lake, Mb.  The races are held as part of the Cross Lake Treaty & Indian Days and are formally called the Douglas Monias Sr. Memorial Canvas Canoe Marathon.

I've been told that the race is 30km/day for three days and that the crew need to change positions, bow & stern, at the 15km mark.  A good amount of prize money make the races hotly contested.

You can see that these converted freighter canoes are made much narrower than originally built, and that proper rowing requires an outrigger fitted for the oarlocks to be set far enough apart.

A few photos captured from the DVD.  I apologize for the image quality, but whatever camera was used produced a pretty coarse image.  I had to screen capture the images and then tweaked them to get a reasonable image.

I received an order in February for a new Freestyle paddle.  This order is from a previous client.  I particularly appreciate orders from previous client as it is a real expression of support.  Anyway, this order specifically used the word "distinctive" as a design criteria.

So, I took the opportunity to try a couple of things that I've been wanting to try out for awhile.  This paddle is using a white cedar shaft core and blade, walnut shaft facings and grip, and a walnut blade border incorporating a kind of herringbone pattern within it.

The Brigden is out of the shop now, and the next canoe is in.  This time it is an old Chestnut "Bob's Special".  A particularly unique aspect of this canoe is that it is the first canoe that I every worked on professionally back in 1987.  Well, its back.

Starting off is to strip out the old and tired varnish from the interior, then open it up for rib repair.  There are about a dozen broken ribs.  Which isn't surprising, really, as the "special" part of the name "Bob's Special" refers to an ultralight weight approach to building.  Most notably are the very thin ribs, about 1/4" thick, and the every thin inner gunnels.  They still used maple for decks, seats, and thwart!

Once the rib repairs are closed up its time to sand the interior for varnish.

One of the quirks of the Brigden canoes is that the seat frames were often made up from old hockey sticks and you can often still see the old labels underneat.  Why wast perfectly good wood?  Bill's canoes were always pragmatic and people love them for this.

Repair work for February includes a 13' Huron and a 16' Brigden.

I had done some work on the Huron a few years ago and the client was going to finish it off, but he never did get the time to do it, so he brought it back.  All I needed to do was sand and varnish the interior 2 coats, prep and paint the exterior, install and varnish new gunnels, and install the stem bands.

The Brigden was an old one, 1970, and it has decks that I have never seen before but quite like on a Brigden.  Galvanized sheet metal!  Usually Brigdens have varnished masonite or s sheet of formica.  Prep and paint the hull, make and install new gunnels, and re-fill the seats with new webbing make up this job.

I'm running out of shop space for working...

My saved tomato plant is still going, but looking a little "leggy" as it strains for more light.

I started the month getting about a dozen or so paddle back orders started.  Finishing them reveled on of the real challenges of running a small business-the paddles were pre-paid but I still needed to earn February's income.  So I had to put them on hold for a little while and get onto some other repair work.  I will be returning to them in about a week.

I needed to make up some new fiberglass plates for use in the reinforced tips.  I laid up a 4 layer panel of black pigmented fiberglass.  After curing overnight I can cut it into pieces using simple scissors.  I tried using the bandsaw in the past, but the blade is dulled very fast.