Cape Falcon kayaks have sparked our interest for a few years, the lightweight design and aesthetical finesse that these canoes achieve matches with no other. We decided to purchase the 66 canoe because the plans are incredibly versatile- you can add alterations anywhere into the building formulas with ease. Consequentially, the course is much more hands on, and although guided through every step you can add your flare of creativity. This is not a flat pack ikea set.
We decided to build 15’1” single blade canoes with a 30” width and 12” deep. We also loved the way Brian’s asymmetrical canoes look with the added tumblehome, so decided to commit those added details into the plans.
Catching Up – the second and third canoes – 03/04
So today is the 3rd of April and it’s about the second day of work using the actual guidebook written by Mr Schulz to build our cape falcon 66 canoes for our environmental education river journey. I think it’s fair to say we’re already noticing significant differences in both process and outcome compared to when we were just taking (occasionally) educated guesses and having a go based on free content from Youtube.
Although, we haven’t been idle. For the last few months we’ve been raising funds to help sponsor our river expedition and education project. We then found the supportive Drumduan school in which we were kindly able use their workshop, and then with the help of the school children we calculated and then ordered our quarter sawn Ash and flat sawn Douglas Fir timber for our construction. In fact, based on a combination of free content and guess work, we’ve already made the wooden frame for one of our three skin on frame canoes.
All three of us are passionate about ecology, wildlife and education. By building canoes and paddling down the longest river in Scotland, we hope to catch the attention of the primary school children who we will be stopping to meet along the way to run our educational ecology based sessions. You can see more about our project and how we plan to use the canoes here and can also find us on instagram to follow the build and journey on @wild_rivers_project.
But now it gets interesting. As we progress with our second and third canoes according to the handbook, we are already beginning to notice differences. At the very least it’s going a lot faster now and not least because we’ve got a bit more experience. The sheer mathematics provided in the handbook is speeding up our progress no end.
The gunwales for our second and third canoes are proving to be rather significantly different in shape. Chiefly, wider and more tastefully asymetrical. This is promising. Our new gunwale shape looks very pleasing.
However – it has already got us thinking about which of us is going to be attempting to run this river in canoe number one!
Before we get started we would like to warn/prepare you for the mixed jumble of metric and imperial values, we are just as scrambled as you! a bunch of brits doing it US style…
Timber – 25/03
We headed to Logie steading timber mill and although they didnt stock western red cedar they had a good stock of green ash that we could use for the ribs. Due top our tight schedule for the expedition we decided to go for what they had in stock which was larch and douglas fir – our build is going to be substantially heavier than Cape falcons builds. We got the ash milled up to 1” thick boards and calculated our longest rib length with the formula for the board length. The softwood was all planed down to ¾” for our laminations.
Steaming setup – 29/03
Firstly we set out to build our steaming set up which is comprised of a beer keg with a 1.5m welded pipe to the top that led to the steamer box. We had a door on the front of the steaming box but after a test run that included getting lightly burnt when we opened the box we decided to take inspiration from Brians system with a small opening and a towel over the front. we would fill up the keg from a small hole in the side via a siphon and an old piece of gas hose.
Rocker and laminating gunwales – 30/03
We set aside our top plank of the gunwale laminations and marked the positions of the ribs 5” apart leaving a 17” margin each end. We then chocked up the plank by the amount of our planned rocker of 2 ⅛” bow and stern. Heights from the floor were then measured at each rib location – essential values we will use later to calculate each rib lengths. The Gunwale was then laminated (douglass fir sandwiched in between two planks of larch) to a sheer of 6”- Regrettably, this is too shallow and we wish we had glued a 7” sheer as Brian suggests.
Laminating a pair of gunwales, mortising each gunwale for ribs.
Sheer measurements and building the deck – 31/03
The lamination was ripped in two to make our two 1” gunwales that were then cut to 15’1”. One gunwale was laid on its side on the floor with a string line to measure the sheer fore and aft for the stem and rib length calculations. Rib mortises were then cut for each rib to slot into.
Now for the exciting bit – we cut and screwed in our central spreader and bent the bow and stern ends to meet together, it now starts to look something like a canoe!
The gunwale ends were then kerfed together, lashed and dowelled to make a satisfying glue free joint. The temporary stems were cut out of our flat sawn hemlock plank to accomodate for a recurve stem and thus the board width we used was 11 1/2” wide. The Keel was set ontop of a depth baton clamped to the central spreader of 12” and used the stem calculations to cut the height of the stem. After remeasuring the rocker to ensure it was what we planned it had all worked out perfectly!
Kerfing the gunwale ends, attaching stems and keel (in order).
To finish off the day we cut and planed all the ribs (6.7mm thick) we would need with a significant error margin- we needed 30 ribs, but cut an extra 20 just incase – a very wise decision!
Steam bending the ribs – 01/04
We fired up the beer steamer to steam in some test ribs, ensuring our ribs had been cut to the right length and that our measuring stick was doing its job well. We sent a photo to Brian who quickly responded with some words of relieving reassurance that the geometry looked great.
With the first canoe, (our ugly duckling) we began steaming at 3pm, severely underestimating the time it would take to steam and went through to 3am – it was a night of many snapped ribs. However, this time we learnt from our mistakes and began as early as possible. At this stage we had come to the conclusion that our bending stock wasn’t the best, and so blessed each rib as we whittled down the ends to fit tighly into the mortises. After all, ideally bending ash should be felled maximum 6 months to a year before, whereas our log was 2 years old! If it is too dry we can soak it to better its bending performance.
The ribs maintain some of their flex for quite some time as they slowly set into their new position. Consequentially, we needed to get the stringers on as quickly as possible to ensure any minor rib adjustments could happen as the stringers pull the canoe into longitudinal order.
Lashing the stringers – 03/04
4 stringers were used on each side of the canoe and were spaced according to Brian Shultz’s recommendations (just like almost all other elements of this build).
At this point we have our steam-bent ash ribs, sitting just below the keel. From here we used a skill saw and electric planer to cut down the stringers to 13m by 16mm with a length of around 16ft. We then assembled the stringers on to the hull with clamps according to Brians suggested measurements. For the first stringer we cut a 4-inch block which we used to set the height of the first stringers from the gunwales along the length of the canoe. For the subsequent stringers we derived spacing measurements by using a small piece of wood the same dimensions of the stringers to act as a test piece. Then we cut a selection of different potential spacing measures so we could experiment, using our simulator piece of stringer, with an equal spacing distance that produced a distance between the fourth stringer and the keel inside the range suggested by Brian. We started at the 16th rib and found that our ideal spacing size was 3”. With a 3” spacer between each stringer, we had 5.5” inches between the fourth stringer and the keel. Having established this, we then experimented with other spacing blocks to find out what spacer sizes would produce appropriate stringer spacing at the bow, the stern and at the 8th and 22nd ribs. We used measurements based on Brians suggestions aswell as fitting the spacers according to eye. In the end, we actually set the bow and stern spacing’s to 1.5” each.
Having established our spacing measurements and cut appropriate spacing blocks, we then fitted all our stringers, symmetrically on both sides with clamps to hold them in place, only on the ribs we had already dowelled into place.
Once we had reached this stage, the next step was to put some good music on, recruit some help and lash on all the stringers from the gunwales up towards the keel, starting from the bow and finishing at the stern. At this stage we made sure to keep lash evenly on both sides, to keep the tension in the ribs symmetrical.
The keel was then symmetrically clamped into place down the centre of the canoe, checking at intervals with a line from the top of the gunnels and from the deepest pair of stringers. Once the keel was in place it was lashed down.
Shaping the recurved stems and lashing the keel – 04/04
Now that the stringers and keel is lashed onto the ribs it is time to remove the temporary stems and shape them up. A fairing stick was used to create a fair curve for the front and inside edges of the stems which was cut out with a jigsaw. The outer edges of the stems were then chamfered (important to ensure the boat cuts effortlessly through the water). We also decided to add a pinch of progressive rocker by cutting 5mm off base of the stems. The stems were then lashed tightly to the gunwales. We then checked the rocker again with a piece of string to ensure it is as desired.
Once the stems were in we temporarily screwed in the keel to the stems to hold it in place.
Cutting and Lashing the stringer ends – 04/04
So here we have it, strength and structure really coming together nicely, now to finish off the bow and stern we need to kerf the stringer ends and lash them down to the stems. Firstly, we cut the stringers so that the cut edge meets the stem, and if needed further kerfed the join to make it fit closer. Here we made sure the outer edge of the stringers met the chamfer of the stem smoothly, to ensure no hard points or angles in the canvas at the bow and stern for when its time to skin.
We drilled holes in the stems just above and below each stringer and then lashed the stringer ends onto the stems. This was a very satisfying moment, seeing the curves of the bow and stern evolve for one of the last times.
Lashing the stringers to the stems.
Lastly, the keel was dowelled and glued onto the stems and every other rib was dowelled in its mortise. We dowelled every other one because we wanted to allow for some movements in the frame, to allow the ribs to self adjust into their new home.
Adding sheer blocks – 05/04
We decided to glue 1.5 x 18 inch sheer blocks into the bow and stern for added aesthetics, planed a curve into them so that they blended into the gunwales.
Sheer blocks ready for gluing, clamping, and shaping.
Oiling the frame and Tumblehome – 06/04
We used Rustins Danish oil from the local hardware store. The first coat was thinned to 50% with white spirit allowing the oil to penetrate into the wood. The second and third coats were neat Danish oil, with a day in between coats. The frames at this stage are looking very impressive, golden, sealed and ready for some cloth!
The gunwale beam is 30” so to get some tumblehome we cut the middle support down to 28” and used some straps to being the gunwales inwards.
Skinning the frame – 09/04
This stage seemed almost mythical, we spoke of the skinning day as the holy grail and expecting total euphoria – Myth somewhat becomes reality, we have what we want, but this time with no shining light, just blisters, cuts, and throbbing fingers. Anyway. We got cracking on.
The first thing to do here is cut the rub rails and pilot hole for the screws. As these are what hold the canvas tight against the gunwales, they needed to be ready before the skinning process commences.
We used 12oz ballistic nylon from the German company extremtextil. We measured and cut a length of cloth that was the canoe length + 8 inches for excess. The nylon was folded in half on the table and the central line (longitudinal) was marked where the cloth would sit on the centre of the keel.
The canoe was turned upside down on workhorses 1/3 in from each end and the cloth laid out with its central line on the centre of the keel with 4” excess on each end. We started with the bow, where we pinned the cloth either side with push pins and sewed a seam following the recurved stems. The seam was sewed to the side of the stems to give space for a rubbing strip on the bottom of the boat.
With the bow sewed up, we made a mark where the cloth reaches the stern. A mark 2” closer to the bow was made, which will be where the stern seam will be. The bow seam was unhooked and the cloth pulled the 2” towards the stern where our new mark meets the edge of the stem. What we are doing here, is sewing the skin 2” shorter than the length of the canoe, so that when we pull it over, it fits tight over the frame. If this step would be missed out, you might as well had skinned your canoe in tissue paper. Push pins down the keel were placed to hold the centreline.
Stretching the canvas over the frame.
Nylon slackens when wet, so we then needed to wet the canvas before stretching and stapling it down to the gunwales. For the first time, the perpetual Scottish rain became an asset – all we had to do was put the canoe outside.
Working from amidships, the canvas was pulled down and stapled to the gunwales on port side (not too hard as to pull the pushpins out, we get the tension from starboard side). Then on port side we could really crank the tension up and staple down the canvas, finishing it off by hitting the staples further in with a hammer. During this time the canvas was maintained wet by misting with water.
Stretching and stapling the cloth to the gunwales ready for the rub strip.
Rubrails were then screwed flush with the top of the gunwales, clamping the canvas in place.
Now the flurry is over, we could sit back and watch the canvas tension up as it dried, making a drum tight skin. A bit like watching paint dry, but much more satisfying.
Trimming the canvas with Hairams “melting machine” and and finishing the skin.
The canvas now dry, rested with sleep, and itching for another day in the workshop we needed to hot knife the excess canvas from the gunwales. However, we had no hot knife.
This was Hairam’s time to get creative once again, the south African student had been helping us with enthusiasm for the whole build, he’s not someone to just go and buy things, so he went into smileys van, ripped out the leisure battery (with neutral consent) and wired up the jump leads to the battery with a thin wire in-between. The first one went white and melted immediately – he resorted to a thicker wire. Within 10 minutes his grin was glowing behind the sparks and amber red wire.
He began to trim the canvas, at points the edge setting on fire, everyone watching cringing from the burn marks on the beautifully finished gunwales – “nothing we can’t sand out” he said… with some practise he wielded the machine with ease and minimal burns! Legend.
We sewed the canvas into a hood on the bow and stern and got ready to coat the skin.
Coating the skin. 10/04
This is where our time pressure and low budget came to bite us, although in the course Brian lists a fantastic “top coating mistakes” section, which included not buying enough 2 part polyurethane varnish, we did exactly that…
We used almost all our 2-part polyurethane varnish on our first “estimation” canoe, so by the time we got here to coat our first cape falcon canoe we had no coating, and the first primary school booked in to visit in 3 days… not enough time to order in coatings.
Racing around inverness trying to find 2-part polyurethane in vain, we resorted to rustins 1 part interior polyurethane varnish.
Coating the canoes with 1 part polyurethane and 2 part polyurethane (from left to right).
From the chemistry lab at Drumduan school they donated us some iron oxide that we mixed into the varnish to make a rusty red colour. We applied 3 coats with 12 hours in-between. After much anxiety about the finish, all seems good so far, a relatively hard and gloss finish to our skin. However, comparing it to the epiphanes 2-part stuff it was much softer and clearly not the same quality.
Building the seats – 12/04
We glued 15” x 9/64” slips of ash onto the inside of the gunwales for added support for the seats to get bolted through.
We opted to laminate our own seats for these canoes using spare bending ash – a process we started in advance of the coating stage to that once the coatings were cured, we could just fit the seats straight in.
We laminated a 1.5” bend into the crosspieces of the seats to make a distance of 9” between the bottom of the seat and the bilge of the boat, as recommended by Brian.
The depth of the seats was in total 11.5” allowing the maximum adjustment in-between frames. The side rails were mortise and tennon jointed into the seat rails.
We webbed the seats with 1” black webbing that we cut off ratchet straps, and tacked them underneath the seat to fix them in.
As we have asymmetrical canoes we placed the front of the seat 5” back from the centre of the canoe which turned out to be a great balance. Bolted through with butterfly nuts on the underside made for an easy assemble and removal if required for adjustments.
Finishing the canoe – 14/04
Desperate to float these beautiful crafts, we quickly fitted d-loops on the bow and stern for painter and throw line attachments.
We also lined the inside with mechanic’s mats and zip tied them to the ribs, these make it more comfortable kneeling and made sure we couldn’t place our foot through the skin, unless you really wanted to!
Initial feedback on Performance
Loading up the canoes and taking them to Crianlarich, the start of our river journey on the Tay was a surreal moment, 3 weeks of building, a handful of late nights in the workshop till dawn all comes to a heads here. Are they tippy? Do they have a good balance of tracking and manoeuvrability? We had no doubt they looked beautiful. These are the three main questions we had before floating them, eager to find our answers we took them for a test float on Loch Lubhair, just downstream of Crianlarich on the 17th of April 2024.
Stepping into the canoe in the evening sun in the highlands and setting off to the other side of the loch, pure liberation. This canoe was such a delight to paddle, she instantly felt relatively stable (even for a novice paddler), cut through the water like nothing else, manoeuvred with ease whilst also having great tracking ability. We all felt more confident kneeling, and also felt like we could get more speed and power from the boat in that position. At this stage, having only spent 1 hour in a conventional “bathtub” canoe it is hard for us to give a detailed breakdown on the performance, but all in all, we were very impressed!
That night we had a fire by the loch and took them out under the stars, the loch was so glassy you could see a print of the stars in the reflection of the water. A surreal moment of peace made the building oh so worth it, despite still having 80 miles of the river Tay to enjoy!
Performance review after 80 miles of the Tay. Canoe 1, 2 and 3 differences.
The canoe this blog is focussed on is the second build, known as “Mrs Tumblehome” (to be renamed urgently), the third canoe named “Sabrina” was also built to the same specifications apart from the deliberate adjustment of having thinner ribs – 6mm due to being left with uglier bending stock being left till last (not advised!) however, this craft was incredibly lightly, a bonus if that’s what your after!
the canoes were fantastically light, meaning portages were a breeze.
Young tipper
The first build “Young tipper” was build purely off closely analysing 2 of Brians youtube videos. “skin-on-frame canoe build time lapse” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pf-UEvQ3SiM) was used for the methodology, and “first skin-on-frame solo canoe build of 2021!” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-5mRMbZyio) was used for the dimensions.
Young tipper ended up preforming and even looking very different to our 2 other canoes built to Brians course, primarily (if you hadn’t guessed yet) a lot more tippy!
She was built with a totally oversized frame – some ribs were 9mm thick (how the hell we steamed those, I have no idea) and much thicker stringers. The added thickness made her a lot heavier than the course built canoes. Also as we didn’t have the rib lengths at each mortise, we clamped them onto the side of the gunwales then cut them to a length that looked good. We unfortunately didn’t get enough flatness in the bilge towards the ends of the canoe and so ended up looking a bit like a diamond when turned upside down, whereas Sabrina and Mrs T looked more like almonds, full into the bow and stern. As the hull was much more rounded, we thought shed be faster, nope!
Predicting her to be tippy, when putting the seat in we stretched her out 2 inches to a beam of 30”. This wasn’t ideal as it slacked off the canvas slightly. But it did mean she was more stable.
She was also a lot less manoeuvrable, with hardly any benefit of better tracking. Partly due to a rocker that got flattened by leaving the canoe upright on the floor, her weight unfortunately flattening the central ribs. We also didn’t add any progressive rocker, also reducing the manoeuvrability even further.
Grandtully rapids were given a crack, and yes, a crack of the ribs and stringers too… After capsizing, the canoe went over a large boulder in the rapids, snapping one of the ribs in the bow, and 2 stringers either side. In other words, although she was a heavier build, it seems as though with these canoes, that wont help you much under the wrath of heavy rapids. Generally, your better off cutting weight and following Brians dimensions. Portaging was made very tiresome with this canoe.
Mrs Tumblehome and Sabrina
Mrs tumblehome (the canoe we followed for this blog) was named so due to her lovely tumblehome, giving her an ease of stroke whilst paddling. It became apparent especially whilst sending the grade 2 and 3 rapids that the manoeuvrability was much needed for these more technical sections of the river. She also tracked beautifully whilst doing the 15 miles of loch Tay, remained very stable and was a breeze to paddle on the heel. After joint building all three canoes, this is the one that we all were fighting over- well, not really, but she was certainly the best of the three canoes!
The stability came through secondary stability, which is why paddling on the heel worked so nicely.
The coating was good, however during scraping the top payer of paint would come off. It certainly wasn’t as durable as young tipper who had a bomb proof layer of epiphanies 2-part varnish- in the future it is a no brainer to use the two-part polyurethane varnish. Maybe we will re-skin this canoe and Sabrina and use the real deal. That’s the beauty about these canoes, you can reskin them, and as long as the frame is well looked after, repaired where needed, these boats will last a lifetime.
Sabrina was very similar to Mrs tumblehome in performance, but the largest difference was the bow and stern, which was much blunter. This bluntness came from when we kerfed the stringer ends, where we lashed in the stringers with not enough taken off the inside, so the outside edge protruded the bevel on the stems making a sharp point, this was then whittled down, adding girth and subsequently pushing more water during paddling.
Conclusions
Each canoe cost us £500 and 1 week of building time, a total of around 70 hours.
The Cape Falcon canoes have exceeded our expectations tremendously. Although between us we had some practical skills from converting vans and boatbuilding, the canoe we built with only our own skills was a bit ropey and didn’t perform to the scratch. We and are very grateful for purchasing the course to get what we were looking for in these crafts and learn a skill adapted from the most iconic heritage of skin-on-frame canoe builders in the world
The course contains detailed videos from Brian at each step that guide you swiftly through the process, bang for your buck it’s a no brainer. We are confident that Brians courses are clear enough for anyone to tackle these builds, so if you’re new to woodwork but and want to learn a bunch of skills and end up with a beautiful boat that catches the eye, go for it!
Lastly, a huge thanks to Drumduan school for hosting us and being a part of the beginning of this educational journey. We received a great deal of donations, generous helping hands and support along the way which was invaluable to the success of the project – a very heartfelt thank you to you all.
Photos by Daisy Hunter, from @wild_rivers_project – instagram.
