Torpedo End OT's

Anyone know what mold OT used for the basis of the TE canoes? Charles River? Otca? HW? Unique mold? Few weeks ago, we had a Serial # search from someone with a 17' TE and that got me thunking about it...

Inquiring minds want to know

My guess is that there was not a unique mold for the torpedo end model. I was always told that the origin of the torpedo end canoes was for the canoe races on the Charles River. An elongated stem was an easy way to make a faster and longer canoe on an existing form. The Old Town form inventory from 1916 is attached below and the "MC" model at number 41 is the only unusual one. This is probably the form used for the canoe described at http://forums.wcha.org/showthread.php?t=445 in 1912.

This list also probably answers the previous question about Carleton war canoe forms since there are no Carleton canoe forms shown that are more than 20 feet long.

I once owned an original Molitor as shown in the build record below with elongated stems that appeared to have been built on the HW form.

Benson

Just a quick aside that doesn't help with the 1920's torpedo end canoes - in the 1960s, one of the Otca forms was modified to build 17' Molitor models.

As Benson says, it is a fairly trivial process to put different stems on a canoe to change the profile. Some companies molds (e.g. Kennebec) stopped a foot or so short of the stems, which certainly would facilitate this, even if it weren't done on purpose...

The pictures below show the current Molitor form at the factory today with the new modifications and part of the old "17 OTCA" still stenciled on the end as Dan mentioned.

Benson