Bear Mountain Boat: Blog

Kayakcraft contains detailed advice and instructions on how to make your own planking - we've digitized that section for the benefit of builders who're curious about choosing wood, the machining process, joining short planks, and more. These steps are equally applicable to canoes, kayaks, and small boats.

Regardless of what you know about kayaks at the moment, the kayak you build should be the right one for you. It will be your mental image of pointing that beautiful varnished deck out into the waters of your favourite place that will keep the project going.

One does not have to be a naval architect to understand the basic principles of canoe design. They are relatively simple, yet vitally important – especially to the builder. The curves of a well-designed canoe are its calling card – a proclamation of the kind of paddling it does best.

To us photos of Ted diligently scraping away on a C4 were just business as usual, but when we shared a few last week, Ted’s choice of tool provoked a surprising amount of curiosity. Odds are good you’ll be familiar with the paint scraper method of shaping the hull if you’ve already built your own canoe, but if you used an alternate method or are looking to refine your technique, read on for an ode to the humble paint scraper.

For home wooden canoe builders producing only one boat, a fixed height "horse" fitted with a carpet sling for the wooden canoe or kayak is a good solution. Horses are easily and quickly built and can be used for display or storage The wooden horses Bear Mountain Boats built nearly 20 years ago are still in use. The basic wooden horse can be built to your specific height and space requirements.The canoe sits upright in the sling for fairing, sheathing and sanding the interior. To work on the canoe in the inverted position, attach a 1-by-4 inch board across the top of the wooden canoe horse. An excellent alternative is a fitted cradle mold, which is attached to the strong back. It keeps the hull from sliding around during sanding and supports the hull in the desired position for glassing.

The routine for glueing while planking your wooden canoe project is simple, and  will get the job done efficiently plus ensuring you don't forget to put glue on the stems. The syringe you use for gluing can be bought from epoxy or dental suppliers. It holds enough glue for about 18 feet of plank, so you can judge how much glue you are using. If you run out halfway down the plank, you are applying too much glue. If the syringe is still almost full when you reach the far end, you are applying too little glue. Applying the right amount of glue while building your wooden canoe is a knack that you will develop as you become comfortable with the process. In principle, there should be just enough glue to bond the joint, with only a small amount squeezing out when the next plank is stapled in place. In practice, it is better to use too much glue and wipe off the extra than to use too little and worry about the planks coming apart when the staples are pulled out.

From finishing your small craft masterpiece to sharing your love of canoe building, Bear Mountain Boats offers four New Year's Resolutions that will help you be a better canoe builder in 2013.

It is possible to build an entire canoe without using any staples at all. It takes a bit more time if you want the most traditional looking boat possible. What's more, the techniques we have developed for building in this way have proven useful even if staples are being used to plank the hull. The clamping tricks and jigs come in handy for situations (such as the compound curve at the turn of the bilge) where a single staple isn't enough and two staples are too many.

The dust produced by machining parts and sanding the hull has potential health consequences that no one should ignore. Paying attention to a few simple, inexpensive precautions will ensure that the canoe building experience is as safe as it is satisfying.

We make a habit of immediately using a dry cloth to remove any stray glue that gets on the gloves. This interruption controls the contamination at the source so it doesn’t spread and is a constant reminder to find ways of keeping your hands clean in the first place.

On softwood and end grain, it is wise to do a pre-coat with un-thickened epoxy to reduce the danger of the thirsty wood drawing all the epoxy out of the thickened mixture.

To do this in one step...

Ted Moores is a renowned boat builder, author and teacher whose name is synonymous with stripper canoes. He and his partner Joan Barrett own Bear Mountain Boats in Peterborough, Ontario. This is the first of a series of articles by Ted Moores on lessons learned from building his 30' Electric Hybrid Launch Sparks which incorporated the knowledge gained from 35 years of wood/epoxy boatbuilding. Pay attention kids.

Sparks is a science project. A professional builder working for a client has the responsibility of delivering the boat on time and budget with no surprises so we generally stick to what worked last time. But as a science project, questioning the way things are usually done, pushing the limits of the materials and then taking the responsibility becomes the objective. Because failure is anticipated with any experiment, testing is an important part of the project and has been a whole lot of fun with few surprises, mostly pleasant.

In this series, we will take a look at some of these questions and how we have used WEST SYSTEM® Epoxy to utilize less than ideal wood and look at ways of building boats with wood that will be low maintenance and age gracefully. Since working safe with epoxy has allowed me to have a long career using it, you will hear a lot about safety.

Designing and building a successful skeg for Sparks (our 30' hybrid electric launch featured in Epoxyworks 32) took some head scratching. But in the end, it was just another combination of wood and WEST SYSTEM® epoxy. Our skeg needed to be functional and age gracefully, yet be reasonably quick and easy to build and install. This project was an ideal opportunity to explore the limits as well as the advantages of combining wood with epoxy to engineer simple solutions to complex problems.