Tandem Skin on Frame Canoe

In Early December 2022 I purchased a plan from Cape Falcon Kayak to build a Skin-onFrame Canoe. After reviewing the course I settled for a Tandem Canoe. Brian suggested the size: 15’8″, 36 wide, 13″3/4 deep depth to beam.37, rib length to beam .40.

The first challenge was finding the right wood, clear and straight grain and of the right dimension 16’. Thankfully I was put on touch with a Japanese woodworker who, in his long career as woodworker, has collected an enormous amount of lumber and is now selling some  of it.  It took some searching and moving huge logs to get what I needed but eventually I found some very good and hard to find Douglas Fir beam of the right length, clear and straight grain.

Milling the lumber

Getting the right lumber took me a while and it paid off right away. First task was milling the 16′ beam in to gunwales, 10 stringers and the keel. The length and weight made it a bit of a challenge. Thankfully I have access to a wonderful wood shop, and the help of great buddies. The beam was pretty straight and a few well position feathers kept it right snug against the table saw’s fence. In 2.5 hours I milled al the pieces and rounded over the stringers with a SlickPlane

Gunwales layout, measuring the rocker height, and lamination.

Even if still preliminary work I was excited to glue up the gunwale. I was really pleased how easy it turned out.

Cutting the mortises and starting to see the preliminary shape of my canoe

Halving the laminated beam in two gunwales took six hands but went smooth. First I had to clean up the excess glue, it turned out to be pretty easy. Setting up the router to cut the mortises took a while and everything got checked 3 times, I really didn’t want to screw up this one!

Bending in the ribs

This was the day I most fretted but also the day I was mostly looked forward. Of all the steps of building the canoe bending the ribs was the one that intimidated me the most since I had zero experience bending wood. I understood the principle and knew the steps, but as often is the case it takes me doing something a few times to get the hang of it. To compensate for the fact that I could practice only once and with a limited number of ribs I watched Brian’s videos a dozen time to memorize his move, honing down the timing and figure out which kind of bending technique was needed and where. I followed is advise and had everything I needed well organized. I tested bending just 6 ribs the day before. I bent two ribs for each style. Testing was good, it gave me a sense of what laid ahead and I had a chance to get some valuable feed back from Brian to correct what I was doing, I needed to bend more aggressively.  I also came to the conclusion that I needed to shape the bend in my hand within 15 seconds then place the rib and finish up shaping it while the rib was still playable, that made a big difference. I was able to work at the wood shop while no one else was there with the help of my buddies who helped with symmetry and alignment and made my job so much easier. I didn’t break any ribs and I was quite satisfied with the result. The keel pushed up by 1/4 “, totally acceptable according to Brian. After lunch we lashed the stringer, that took much longer!

I bent one rib every 2 minutes, why not enjoy the process? That gave me plenty of time between ribs bending and in 64 minutes I was done. I used half the water tank of the wallpaper steamer and never had to bother with the kettle I had prepared.

The wood shop I have access to is a collective communal project where wood working classes are taught and we often promote the place through photo and movies. A videographer took a time lapse movie of the bending, she made a great job of it: