Adding a little dash to your Canoe! Even if your canoe plans don't specifically call for them, you would be surprised just how easy it is to add a little flair to your canoe or rowing craft. Scuppers not only add to the looks, they also serve a purpose. when you flip your boat over it gives the water a way to exit the craft. Scuppers on bigger (trailered craft) are pretty much just for looks. As most of you know, when it comes to building your own boat, there is nothing wrong with doing something just for looks. First a little disclosure before we start making our scuppered gunwales. All of the gunwales we have here at our shop whether we are using them here or sending them out to customers are cut by machine out of long pieces of Ash. Although this is preferable, making them as outlined...

arge clear timber is getting hard to come by. This simple technique will cost you about $100 in tools, glue and jig material and give you a rock solid stem with a perfect shape. In years gone by, boat plans called for stems that were typically made from sawn timber in multiple pieces, and the pieces were glued together and assisted with through bolts. Words like rabbett and knee are seldom used on newer plans when referring to the stem. In fact most stems today are made from inner and outer stem pieces. The inner stem is actually the integral part of the hull where the outer stem typically includes the cutwater and has a primary function of protecting the bow of the boat. Not only are these two piece stems easier to build with, they are typically much stronger than a traditional stem. If...

The Basics of Boat Lofting Introduction First, let me make it perfectly clear that the vast majority of the boats on our site are lofted for you and full size patterns are provided.  There are very (very) few boats on our site that require lofting.  Boats such as the tug boat would require  a massive printer to print out patterns, and even if we could, using them would be rather impossible.  In theory, if you are prepared to take on a project the size of the tug boat, you should be able to loft as it will be invaluable in the actual building process. Let's get a piece of house cleaning out of the way first. The correct term for one who lofts is a loftsman. This person is defined as one who creates patterns or frames. For the purposes of this document, so as not to...

“THE COST OF THE CURVE” Those who know me well have heard me say at one time or another that “nothing in life is free”. This is particularly true in some of the design decisions of boats. At the risk of getting myself ostracized from the boating community, I would rather be up front with a prospective builder and tell them the positives and negatives of a design even at the risk of loosing that customer. You will, at a minimum, give up a good number of weekends to build your boat, and depending on the boat you may spend hundreds of hours building. Although I stick by my philosophy that the building of the boat is an important and enjoyable part of the journey, you as the builder have every right to know where that journey will take you. Generally speaking, hulls that are full right to...

A LITTLE EXTRA WORK - A LOT OF EXTRA STRENGTH! Seat risers and plank seats are typical for boats like the freighter canoes and the Adirondack Guide Boat. Seat risers also have a good role to play in canoes with scuppered gunwales. If your boat plans call for scuppered gunwales or if you decided to add them on your own, they significanlty weaken the mounting points for the seats. The seat riser is a way to have your cake and eat it too. Even if your boat plans do not call for them you should consider if they are right for your situation. This is a much simpler operation than you may think however the steps are important. Installing seats in your boat accomplishes more than just giving you a place to sit. In most cases it also helps to pull the boat together from side to side. Basically...

If your boat plans call for a scarf joint, don't panic. Given the right tools, this is a simple job to do. the trick to getting past the anxiety of doing this is to simple get out the tools and do one. The concept of a scarf joint isn't complicated. It is a simple matter of of cutting a ramp on the wood which has a run of 8 times the rise. That is to say that if you are working with 3/4" plywood, you want to have a scarf which is 6" deep. The run can be as much as 12 times the rise and your boat plans may specify the ratio they want you to use. For this article we will focus on plywood scarfing. The concept is the same for dimensional lumber, however there are simpler methods for cutting scarfs in dimensional lumber than there are for plywood. Practicing on inexpensive lumber is a good way...

I decided to give a small chronicle of the building of the family canoe Billington.  When I designed this boat and generated the canoe plans it was by request for a family friendly canoe that would simply give a day of fun on flat water and would allow for the cooler, the dog, the kids and anything else required for a day on the lake without having to worry about getting wet unless it was a choice.  Though on the surface this seems like a simple request, these canoe plans proved to be a design challenge. 

I had been thinking about building a solo canoe for some time now.  We build a number of new designs here every year, and it has been a while since we have done a double paddle canoe.  Over the years, we have been asked if the Little Rob can be made smaller in size.  Although it is possible, it really wasn't desinged for that.  What we needed was a boat that was smaller than the Little Rob but something more substantial than the  classic Wee Lassie.  I have nothing against the Wee Lassie and have the utmost respect for it's desinger (Henry Rushton), but it is a petite little thing and not suitable for most people.  The little Rob is a nice boat but it was larger than what many people need.The Nantucket Sleigh is stable enough to fish the bays and harbors...

For those of you who have dropped by the shop, you know that you can always find at least a couple of boats being built.  We very rarely however build boats for customers.  Most of our builds are either for locals we know or more often than not are given to charities for auctions.  This allows us to keep doing what we love to do (build boats), without having to purchase acres of land to store the boats we have built. Over the last couple of years we have been asked a number of times to shrink our 20 foot Mi'kMaq freighter canoe to an 18 foot version.  Well for those of you who have lofted boats, you know that there is more to it than to simply open a program, squeeze it down a couple of feet and hit the print button. We received a call from a man in Texas a couple of...