Canadian Canoe by halvoric - Midwest Products - 1:8

[halvoric]

One floorboard fully installed.  I will be touching up the shellac on the ribs/interior to hide the nail holes. 
 

 

 

and the hull finishing is coming along slowly but surely

[halvoric]

The French polish magic is pretty much complete.  Now it’s on to the second floorboard.  Then seats and center thwart.

 

 

 

 

 

[king derelict]

Beautiful finish Dan

Congratulations

alan

[halvoric]

Now both floorboards are in and the hull polish is “done” (it’s hard to resist adding a micron or two more and then buffing it out again).  Had to add a few coats to one side as my very last floorboard bracket screw hole popped all the way through.  Oops.

 

 

And I’ve found one more reference canoe online, this one with the glossiest finish I’ve seen yet.  Makes me feel a bit more “scale”.

 

 

Now for a lot of measuring twice and cutting once as I decide where the two seats and single thwart and their mounting pieces need to go.  Not really looking forward to caning the seats as it is remarkably tedious work.  But worth it I hope.

[ccoyle]

That finish is looking very nice indeed, and it has a kind of old-timey look to it that is appropriate for the subject.

[halvoric]

It’s taken me a while to plan out exactly how to manage the seats (basswood, with a light stain, and a semi-gloss clear lacquer varnish) and seat supports (3/32 x 3/16 mahogany), and to settle on the sizes and hole patterns for the caning.  
 

Still not sure if I’ll be happy with the scale (thinking they may read as a bit oversized), but if not perfect I can always re-make them with another 30 hours of meticulous labor (😆).

 

 

Another batch of screws/bolts will be needed for the seat supports, and some tiny screws for the brass keel strip, which has been weathered/patinated, just needs straightening. 

 

Here is the test warp & weave caning job at scale, although I will be using the flat waxed linen thread (visible in lower left corner) rather than the gold woven thread.

 

 

Already screwed up the front seat (was supposed to be 9 rows high by 11 wide, somehow I only made 8 rows high).  

Edited Tuesday at 03:28 PM by halvoric

[halvoric]

The seats frames are finished along with the mahogany supports.

 

 

So now begins the tedious caning process.  Have to take care to keep twists out of the visible linen thread, to maintain the flat “cane” effect.  
 

 

I like that my miniature “caning pegs” are just cutoff toothpick ends.  🤓

 

[halvoric]

 Doing the (larger) front seat first:  Verticals and horizontals completed, diagonals about 20% complete:

 

 

Trying to keep it neat on the underside:

 

 

See lessons learned from the underside of my test weave: 

 

The sharp-eyed may notice a subtle difference in the pattern between the test (traditional warp-and-weft pattern) and the current seat weave (the Peterborough “quick” pattern).  This is intentional and based on my research (and great debt owed to Mike Elliott’s “This Old Canoe” books).  There was also a Chestnut Canoe Co. version of the “quick” pattern.   What the two quick patterns have in common, and in contrast to the traditional pattern, is that they skip the weaving that normally happens in the fourth step of the vertical/horizontal matrix.  The difference  between the Chestnut and Peterborough quick patterns is quite subtle and is just in the last diagonal step (which strands the diagonal goes over versus under).

 

And now you know more than you will ever need to (or wanted to) about canoe seat caning patterns.  😆

[king derelict]

Lovely work on the seats. Adding to an already beautiful canoe.

alan