What boats and why

Paul is going to build a cedar strip canoe. He said he always wanted to build one. I am working on the rib patterns for an adirondack guide boat. It will be cedar strip as well. The main difference is that the canoe uses patterns or molds that are shaped like the boat. You temporarily attach the cedar strips to it and to themselves. Later, the canoe is unattached from the forms. The guide boat uses ribs that are the shape of the boat, but these stay in the boat. I am trying to get the ribs built and attached to a bottom board so that Paul and I will basically be at the same place when we do our cedar strips. So far, I have 8 rib patterns lofted, and have 5 more to go as well as the stem patterns (inner and outer). I will have pictures soon of the patterns. I decided to not go with a skin-on frame version of my boat. I think I could have built a nice skin boat, but was thinking that the work would be pretty close to building it with wood, and in the end a wood boat might be something that would be around for my grandchildren (note to my girls that I expect this to be many years in the future). I am excited to get going on this project and to work on these boats with my friend.

Getting started

My father-in-law built a really nice cedar strip canoe. He lives in eastern Oregon and so I got to see it at a couple of stages of the build. This really got me interested in building a boat, something I never thought I would do. I looked online quite a bit and ran across skin on frame boats, and various iterations of this concept. These really intrigued me, and so I investigated this set-up. I was wanting something that was fairly small, and that I could fish from. I also wanted something that I could carry a passenger or two in and that would be somewhat stable. Car top capability was also a need as we don't really have space for a trailer.

Meanwhile, I was talking to my friend Paul. He is a carpenter and cabinet maker and has a great shop. Paul said he always wanted to build a cedar strip canoe. Before too long we had decided that we would each build a boat at his shop and help each other on the builds. This blog will be our record of this build. We may decide to build more boats once these are done, but these are for us.