Finally done cutting the strips!!!

This week I was able to make good progress on the preparation steps for the canoe.  Yesterday and today I managed to finished cutting the cedar and basswood into strips.  In all honesty cutting boards into 1/4" strips does not sound very difficult but I did encounter a few hurdles this week.  Yesterday I only cut two boards because the boards were not moving very easily over the table saw.  This afternoon I took the time to wax the table and that made a world of difference.  I was able to finish the last 6 boards in the same amount of time it took me to cut 2 boards yesterday.  This coming weekend I am hoping to cut the pieces for the stems and the frames for the seats.

I also received the caning materials and tools for when I am ready to make the seats.  I am really looking forward to taking on that part of the project.  If I do a good enough job at caning the seats I may get suckered into re-caning a couple of my Dad's kitchen chairs that have some broken cane seats.

I was really excited to finally install the router table attachment on my tablesaw.  After reading several reviews and tips from others who have purchase the Benchdog ProMax router table extension I was expecting the installation to take an extensive amount of time.  I figured out a couple of tricks that were missed by others that installed the same extension on the Ridgid TS3650 tablesaw.  It only took about an hour to install the extension.  The hard part was tweeking the set screws to level the router plate insert.  I had considered purchasing a lift mechanism for the router but was happy to realize that the router I had for the extension table already had a height adjustment on the base.  All I had to do was drill a new hole in the router plate to access the adjustment screw from the top of the table.  It worked like a charm and I am now set up to start putting the bead and cove on the strips.

Thank you to everyone who is following my blog.  I invite all of you to leave comments or questions.

I finally chose the canoe design!!

The pictures above are from www.noahsmarine.com and show the 17' 7-1/2" Redbird canoe designed by Ted Moores at Bear Mountain boats.  The Redbird is considered to be a seaworthy all purpose canoe that has features similar to a Long Nose Ojibwa Rice Harvesting canoe.  The positive side to this design is that it is supposed to be well suited for paddling novices and experienced paddlers.

Needless to say I have finally picked the design for my first canoe build.  I look forward to making the forms and setting up for the build in the next 3-4 weeks.  I have not made any progress this past week because we were out of town on a short summer vacation.  This weekend I am hoping to finish cutting my cedar boards into strips and get them color matched.  The process is very time consuming but very enjoyable.  If everything goes according to my planned build schedule I will be making the stems and start putting strips on the form by the end of September.

As much as I want to spend all of my free time working on the project it is still necessary for me take care of my honey-dos and spend some quality time with my wife and kids.  We also have a new puppy dog named Laiya that has a habit of distracting me with her cute antics.

Slow progress this week.

I has been over a week since my last post and I must unfortunately report that I have made very little progress over that period.  I fell ill with a very nasty stomach flu last week and spent the better part of last week and this weekend regaining my strength.  I did manage to strip two boards of basswood late Saturday but stopped because the 96 degree heat and high humidity were getting to me quickly.

The really positive note is that the mystery of the missing ash wood for the stems, seats and gunwales has been solve.  The simple fact is that I did not bring home any ash because I asked for alder instead.  The best part of the brain fart is that I did not bring home any alder either.  I went back to the lumber store Saturday and they were very nice and helped me correct my own mistakes.  The adventure resulted in me finally bringing home two pieces of 8/4 ash that should be enough to make my stems and seats at the minimum.  I believe that I may have enough to make the gunwales as well but I am not 100% sure at this time.

Anyway, this weekend's plans will keep me away from the garage so I will not be stripping boards again for at least another week. 

I will probably post again this coming week as I finalize which canoe design I will be building.

Stay Tuned!

Cedar Strip Manufacturing Step 2 & 3

Today was another long day getting ready to build my canoe.  I managed to figure out which boards were basswood based on my invoice from the lumber yard.  The bummer was realizing that the alder did not make it into my truck.  I will have to call the lumber yard tomorrow and find out what happened.

On a positive note I finished running all the cedar and basswood through the planer and jointer.  This allowed me to set up the table saw for cutting the 1/4 thick strips for the canoe build.  I was able to rip down 1 board of basswood and 3 boards of cedar.  I have now produced a total of 3 40 gallon trash cans full of saw dust and wood chips.

The first couple of boards were slow work as I became acclimated the setup.  After the first couple strips I decided to add a homemade guide/blade guard to prevent the strips from kicking back and give me a better visual reference to the blade.  The jig worked great and made the rest of the strips cut today much better.

Kandace was kind enough to take a couple of pictures of me at work on the table saw as proof that I am the one doing all the work.

I still have several boards to rip down to size for strips.  Once all the strips are cut I will start the QA to make sure they are all consistently 1/4 inch thick.  As I QA the strips I will color match them and start making strips long enough for the canoe using 8:1 scarf joints.  Yeah!!!  I get to make more jigs and handmade tools.  The jigs to be built are a miter box for making the scarf joints and a few really simple clamping jigs for gluing the scarf joints together.

Keep posted for more progress!

Cedar Strip fabrication Step 1

I managed to purchase most of the wood for the canoe this weekend and setup and mill the 4/4 western red cedar down to 3/4 inch thick with the planer.  After the third board I realized that most of the boards I purchased were greater than 12-1/2 inches thick.  Rather than pull out and setup the jointer to plane the edge I clamped the boards in my Skil utility table and pulled out my handy smoothing plane to cut the edges.  The old school tool use took some time but and the end of the day it was about the same as setting up the jointer.

This week I also ordered the caning supplies for the seats.  The challenge right now is remembering which of the boards I bought is ash and which ones are basswood.  I bought the basswood to use for highlight strips.  Once I remember the which boards are which I will mill them as well.  As you can see from the pictures milling 4/4 boards produces a ridiculous amount of waste in wood chips. Two 40 gallon trashcans full to be exact.  The bright side is that I am not short of wood chips to support a Scout activity making fire starter.

Making the final list of material

Tonight I finished going through the list of materials that I will need to build my canoe and to my surprise the estimated cost is pretty darn close to my wild guess made a month or so ago.  Unfortunately that does not make the cost any less.  The largest portion of the cost will be in the epoxy system used for laminating the hull with fiberglass.  There are cheaper options but the West System epoxy that is recommended by the book Canoecraft and a few other sources really is a good system.  I have used it before when working on the sportfishing docks in San Diego.  The next step is to purchase the western red cedar and start fabricating the strips.

I know that my last post showed the cut pieces for the strongback but I have decided to delay assembly of the strongback until I have the strips, stems, seats, and thwarts completed.  I have not decided when to work on the paddles but I will probably work them into the gaps between rows of the strips.  Saturday I will probably pick up the cedar for the strips.