I own two cedar strip tandem canoes that I built but I’ve been wanting a solo canoe, something really light and the Cape Falcon system was the obvious choice, I’ve long admired Brian’s boats and I’m excited to make one of my own. Having consulted Brian my plan is to build a 13.5ft canoe with a 32” beam and 12” deep.
My first task was to start ordering materials and extra tools required for this build. Living in New Zealand always poses a bit of a challenge with sourcing things. I’ve been unsuccessful in finding green White Oak, but having read a post shared on the Cape Falcon website I see that a previous builder used white oak bought from BBS with no problems, I’m pretty sure that would be kiln dried but I happen to have a large board of oak from there already in my wood pile that was previously destined for a stick chair. I also have plenty of Ash so I might do a trial run with the Oak and Ash I have to see which works best. I bought a 200x50mm plank of Western Red Cedar (sorry my build will be in a confusing blend of imperial and metric as I really struggle with measuring in imperial) unfortunately BBS didn’t have any 25mm in the length I needed, but with their cedar all being quarter-sawn I think this will work well to rip the gunwales from vertically. I’m hoping to order skin and goop from the skin boat school as I did when I built a classic 12 skin on frame dinghy from GABoats a few years ago but the store is currently closed, hopefully they’re back open for business soon!
While I was ordering various supplies I decided to get on with making a curved seat as this way I don’t finish the canoe and then have to make a seat and varnish it before I can use the canoe! My first date working on the canoe was the 31st of May 2025.
I ripped down some Ash on the tablesaw but I wasn’t super happy to glue them up with the finish I got from the saw and the strips were too thin to run through my thicknesser, so I setup my random orbital spindle sander with a fence to work as a thickness sander which I have done before, somewhat annoying to do but it worked well.
My first attempt at making the bending forms didn’t work out symmetrical, turns out the baton I was using to mark them wasn’t bending evenly. I remade them and used an old aluminium ruler to mark out the curve instead. After glueing the bent laminations and cleaning them up I got the rails glued in with mortise and tenons. I took an extra step and removed 2mm from either side of the width of the tenon, which won’t weaken them too much but makes it easier to hide the mortise and tenon behind the lip of the side rails. I will sand and varnish the seat in down time while working on other parts of the canoe.
I realise this is entirely unnecessary but I just couldn’t find (or trust the delivery of) a straight 2×10, plus I was looking at $70 for a wonky 2×10 so I figured a sheet of this plywood is $50 and by building a box beam I could guarantee it straightness and I didn’t mind spending half a day knocking this up! I got almost all of it from one sheet of plywood. I can dismantle it and turn it into some sort of storage or just some long thin pieces of plywood when I no longer need it, but for now it’ll serve well as a flat surface for measuring the rocker, laminating the gunwales and as an infeed table for my tablesaw.
With the box beam setup as an infeed table and my workbench setup as outfeed, ripping the 4600mm long cedar into the various parts on my own was a breeze. I ended up with about enough cedar left that I could probably rip another set of gunwales from it 🤔 I’ll have to find somewhere safe to keep that!
I opted to cut all of the parts slightly oversized by a couple of millimetres so I could run them all through my thicknesser to bring them down to size. I probably waste a bit more wood that way but I find it a more accurate method to bring parts to size and end up with all of my parts having a nice surface, especially on the faces of the gunwales that will get glued together. I had taken down the box beam infeed table setup so I used my circular saw with a fence to rip a thin strip from this Ash board to make the rub strips from. From there it was easy to run through the tablesaw and break down into the 4 small strips I’ll need.
Today I marked up the gunwales, with the 5” spacing this was a task that was definitely easier with an imperial tape measure. None of mine had inches on so I borrowed one from my parents. I checked locations of where the ribs closest to the stems would land and settled on marking out for my ribs either side of the centre mark, the final ribs will end up 18” from each end of the canoe.
I did remember to measure and mark down the rocker height at each of the ribs. Being halfway between a 13ft and 14ft canoe I decided to go with a 40mm rocker height, which is halfway between the two suggestions in the plans for those lengths.
Then I could setup to laminate the gunwales, I watched the video on laminating again on my phone in the workshop before doing the glue up to make sure I had remembered everything and figured I was as ready as I needed to be and started spreading glue. I was expecting the worst but thankfully I was well prepared; I had done a few dry runs and it was not that stressful a glue up! Some of the cheap spring clamps I’d bought online were pretty terrible and the mouths on them were bending which wasn’t fun. With only glueing up gunwales for 1 canoe I figured I could get more than enough clamping pressure with only one clamp every 5 inches. I tried to alternate them but the clamping force was mostly placed in the middle of the gunwales. I have lots of small g clamps so I added some of those in, but I didn’t want to use too many as they’d be adding a lot of weight and tried to place them close to where the shape of the gunwales are being supported. For the sheer height I again chose to go halfway between the 13ft and 14ft recommendations at 171mm.
I split the gunwale lamination in two on the tablesaw. I opted to make one cut on the saw (with help from my mum!) and reference the two cut edges through my thicknesser to bring them down to final thickness. It’s pretty easy to put a curved piece through the thicknesser and just slowly turn it as it runs through.
I have had some cedar sitting in my offcuts for years now and wanted to use that for the stems, but it was all quarter sawn and not quite wide enough. I decided to glue two pieces together with dowels supporting the joint. I figure that will be as strong if not stronger than the single flat sawn board. I didn’t have big enough pieces to make what would be the initial rough cut stem Brian makes in the videos but I drew out what the final stem should vaguely look like and made the blanks as oversized as I could with the wood I had so I could cut them down to final size later.
After gluing up overnight I cut the stem blanks to the initial dimensions specified by Brian
I got the gunwales setup for routing the rib mortises, I almost always have a larger acrylic plate on my router so it was really quick and easy to setup to cut the fences. I considered using the fence that comes with my router but I liked the security of having a second fence and the stability of using my larger base plate to cut them all.
Has any eagle eyed reader noticed my mistake yet?
Yes, despite Brian’s many warnings I managed to put one set of mortises on the wrong side of the line! Fortunately it was the last set of mortises and this didn’t affect the spacing of any of the others. I only noticed it when I was starting to get the gunwales setup to take measurements of the sheer at the rib locations. I think I may have made this mistake when I was cleaning up the gunwales after the glue up, I was sanding the drips of glue off and sanded through most of the markings for the rib mortises (but made sure I left enough to re mark the lines) and maybe at that point I referred to the wrong side of the line and didn’t double check the spacings. I quickly made two cedar plugs, glued them in place, trimmed them flush and cut the mortises in the right place. I am quite ashamed to have made this mistake but I’m fairly proud of how well the plugs fit!
I ran some tests to see what wood I’d want to use for steam bending, I’d heard Ash works well and I have plenty of Ash but also when I made my previous skin on frame boat I used kiln dried oak and had very good results. I also wanted to try soaking the wood vs steaming it dry. The photo on the left shows my results with oak, first two ribs dry and steamed for 4 mins and then 8 minutes, the second two ribs had been soaked and steamed for 4 minutes and 8 minutes. As you can see the dry rib steamed for 8 minutes didn’t get far before snapping, and both dry and soaked ribs at 4 minutes bent the best but both of the soaked ribs felt easier to bend, however there was more springback from the 8 minute rib.
The Ash ribs all snapped (shown in the second photo) but they had a bit of runout so I didn’t have high hopes after the first one snapped. However even before snapping they were far harder to bend and felt way less flexible so even if they hadn’t snapped I don’t know if I’d bother trying with some straighter grained pieces.
I’ve put a final call out to my woodworker friends to see if anyone knows if I can get green oak locally but my plan is to go ahead with the kiln dried oak I have even though I can’t quite tie knots with it 😅
I bought this Oak plank a while back with the intention of turning it into a chair but it’s now going to be canoe ribs. As it’s flat sawn I cut it into 25mm strips before turning them 90° to rip into the 7mm strips. I selected a piece from the centre of this board to cut strips from as that had the straightest grain.
I need 26 ribs and have 27 ribs that are blemish free and nice straight grain, 13 that have a few small imperfections that could be cut off for shorter ribs or a bit of runout etc and then 5 that have bigger knots and imperfections in them. Hopefully this is enough ribs.
I took advantage of my brother visiting this weekend and moved my heavy workbench to the side to make room for building the canoe. I have these two canoe cradles that I built years ago and have served me well on multiple canoe and boat projects, I just screwed some scrap wood to the top to make them into makeshift sawhorses.
After fitting the spreaders I could finally start to see the initial shape of a canoe. I borrowed a pruning saw from my parents and kerf cut the gunwales, it was tricky to begin with but I think I was squeezing them too hard with my hand and when I relaxed up a bit it was a lot easier. Then I tied the ends together, honestly the lashing of the frame together is the part I’m most excited about, I think because it’s so different to any woodworking I’ve done before and yet so simple and effective. It’s quite amazing that the whole boat will be held together with synthetic sinew. I also checked for symmetry and no issues there!
I had already ripped some Ash for rub strips but I followed Brian’s advice and got them cut to final length and drilled all the mounting holes at the drill press before getting the first few coats of varnish on.
I got the stems on and trimmed to size and then could attach the keel and then finally was able to bend in some test ribs. I think everything is looking good for cutting ribs to length and bending next weekend! I have sent a photo to Brian just incase and will cut the ribs to length when he gets back to me.
I want to soak the kiln dried oak for a week and I have made a little bath to soak them in using some heavy duty plastic sheet we had lying around and one half of the box beam I made. So I’ll probably cut the ribs to length and thin the ends after work tomorrow (after hopefully hearing back from Brian) and leave them to soak. So I spent the rest of the afternoon bevelling the edges of the ribs and choosing where to put each piece in the boat. I have a couple with a tiny imperfection at the end that I can cut off for one of the first or last ribs and a couple with tiny imperfections in the centre of the stock that would probably work well in the centre of the canoe where that portion of the rib would be straight. And then I have about 12 nice ribs as backups, I have already thinned both ends of them so I can leave them soaking and then if needed I can cut to length, thin one end and stick in the steamer.
Based on how I went today with steaming it was nice to be able to spend some time supporting each rib and getting it to hold its shape so I’ll probably be putting them in the steamer basically one at a time which will take a lot longer but still only 2 hours or so.
I got all the ribs cut to length in an hour or so after work on a Tuesday night so I could leave them in the bath soaking. I also thinned the ends of each rib to fit in the mortises on the gunwale and thinned the ends of all of my spare ribs so I’d just have to cut them to length and thin the newly cut end if need be.
Rib bending day had arrived. I was so nervous about this as Brian had repeated over and over how important it is to get good bending wood and I was dealing with kiln dried oak… but it mostly went as well as I could’ve hoped for! I did spend a lot more time on each rib as the kiln dried oak wants to spring back more than green oak would, so I spaced my timing to have 1 rib in the steamer at all times so I’d have 4 minutes to bend and hold a rib into place, then fish the next rib out of the bath and get ready to put it into the steam box as the rib before it is ready to come out.
One trick I found particularly handy to help with the symmetry (and I wish I’d done it before soaking them) was to mark the centre of each rib so I could make sure when bending that I was already making a symmetrical bend, I found when I started doing that it made it so much easier to make the bend symmetrical!
I had 3 ribs break on me and one or two with slight cracking in that I decided to replace as I had 12 spares. Doing it with one rib into the steamer at a time took quite long but I definitely needed the extra time to get the ribs to hold their shape. The whole steaming process (including a little break, re-filling the wallpaper steamer a couple of times and remaking a few ribs) took about 4 hours and then I decided that lunch could wait even longer and I should get the stringers roughly clamped on ASAP to try and smooth out the ribs before they stop being as flexible. I turned the steamer on about 9.30am and finished at 3pm, completely exhausted! But very happy!
I got the stringers all lashed on and I have definitely lost a bit of rocker, about 18mm as Brian predicted, I will probably use the trick of weighing down the stems to try and bring back some of that rocker but I’m not too worried. The lashing took a bit of working out but after the first couple of stringers I had it down! My hands are very sore now though!
I was so focused on the technique of lashing that it wasn’t until I had finished all the lashing and looked at the next steps in the course that I started to think the sinew in Brian’s videos looks a lot thicker than mine… when I bought it locally there was only one option for flat waxed artificial sinew so I just bought that assuming it’s all the same. In the plans and the videos I couldn’t see a specification given for a thickness, but I noticed in the supplies video the spool Brian has says 75lbs break load and then I checked and the sinew available from the cape falcon website is rated at 100lbs. Mine (pictured above) had no specification for break load so I did a test on my sinew, tied it to some weights and it broke consistently at just over 25lbs, which as a heavier guy got me a little worried. I realise that the frame will be supported by the skin and with the load being spread among about 300 different connections of ribs and stringers it’s unlikely that sort of load would be placed on any one joint, so maybe the break point isn’t that important. But I had already snapped one of the lashings when I was pulling it tight and I think I’d rather just do things properly. I’m not in a big rush to get this done so I ordered some sinew with a 75lbs break rating from eBay (it’s surprisingly difficult to get artificial sinew in New Zealand and the shipping from anyone selling 100lbs rated sinew everywhere I looked online was crazy) I figure it’ll take me a day or so, won’t cost much to do, the canoe is still at a point that it’d be easy to do plus I enjoyed the lashing process, so why not!
My new artificial sinew arrived! It was a lot nicer to work with and I feel far more confident in it. I managed to get all the stringers re-lashed. I also redid the lashing at the ends of the gunwales and lashed on the two stems to the stringers.
I got the stringers cut and tied to the stem and then tied the keel onto the ribs, it’s nice to finally have it in this state where it’s all held together.
Because I usually like to kneel and perch on the seat in my canoes I’m a little unsure of exactly where I want the seat so I’m going to decide on the location of the seat and install the seat after skinning the canoe when I can get it in the pool and have a look at how it sits in the water, so I glued in place longer seat blocks made from laminations of white ash.
I could finally get the frame cleaned up and gave it a few coats of oil. I decided against the sheer blocks as I figure on a canoe that is so utilitarian and designed to be super lightweight it didn’t make sense to add blocks for aesthetic reasons. I don’t plan on taking this canoe out in rough water so won’t need to worry about surf or spray and I am happy with the understated curve of the sheer line.
I managed to get the recommended skin and coating shipped to New Zealand with no problems (although my package was opened and inspected by NZ customs). I didn’t pick up a hot knife as I had good success on my previous skin boat build using a standard soldering iron, it seemed to work ok for the xtra tough nylon but definitely didn’t work as well as it did on the lighter weight skin I used on my other boat. Sewing is definitely not my forte but I managed well enough to get everything sewn ok!
I got the fabric sewn up in the morning and managed to wet it down and staple it in place and attach the rub strips in the afternoon.
The next day everything was dry enough to put the coating on. I just managed to get all 4 coats on in the five hour window. Auckland is notoriously humid and fickle weather conditions. I had checked the forecast to make sure it was going to be a dry day for applying the finish but after opening the roller door after the first couple of coats I noticed clouds had formed and humidity was steadily rising to 75% so I had to grab the dehumidifier in a panic to try and keep the climate in the workshop under control. The finish seemed hard the next day (testing some drips on the floor) but still slightly sticky to the touch. After a few (slightly anxious) days it seemed to be fully cure.
My one regret is that I didn’t check that the stems hadn’t moved after the skin shrunk and it was only after coating the skin that I noticed the stern had moved slightly to one side and obviously not something that can be fixed once the coating is on but could’ve been fairly easily manipulated into place before hand. Thankfully it isn’t by much and not the end of the world but it is frustrating that I was too preoccupied and stressed about getting the coating on to remember to check!
I wasn’t 100% sure on where I should put the seat so I had made the seat blocks longer and could now spend a little time in the pool trying various seating positions to see where I’d be best balanced in the canoe. I was very glad to have made my seat before starting work on the canoe as I could now simply install it and the canoe is done!
I made a full video of how I built this canoe (obviously without disclosing particular measurements etc) and it’s uploaded on my YouTube channel
I’m super happy with how it turned out! It’s really lightweight and I can easily put it ontop of a car by myself. Feels really comfortable and stable in the water. Pretty easy to control even in little gusts of wind.
I think I will have to work on my paddling as I’m used to a tandem canoe and I’m finding it turns towards whichever direction I paddle more than I’m correcting with my usual j-stroke, but I’m pretty sure that’s user error! If not in the future I may look at continuing the delrin rub strips down the keel as suggested in the course videos. But for now I’m super happy, I paddled about 3km in half an hour in much less sheltered water than I would usually with no issues.
I had a beautiful paddle with my friend in her folding kayak and she took this photo of me
