17ft Old Town HW?

[ThosHall]

Would you please do a serial number lookup for # 144745

Bought last week for $350 in Union, Maine. I'd give it a C for condition, seats replaced with splined cane ones, one cracked rib and a couple of metal patches on the planking done from inside plus a bit of decay on the tips. Someone did a fairly good fiberglass job on it... I would have preferred canvas but I liked its shape enough to overlook the glass.

Thank you for looking after the Old Town records and making them available.

 

[Benson Gray]

Welcome and congratulations, the Old Town canoe with serial number 144745 is a 17 foot long, CS (common sense or middle) grade, HW (Heavy Water) model with open spruce gunwales, ash decks, ash thwarts, ash seats, and a keel. It was built between March and June, 1946. The original exterior paint color was dark green. It shipped on July 17th, 1946 to North Belgrade, Maine. A scan of this build record can be found below.

This scan and several hundred thousand others were created with substantial grants from the Wooden Canoe Heritage Association (WCHA) and others. A description of the project to preserve these records is available at http://www.wcha.org/catalogs/old-town/records/ if you want more details. I hope that you will donate, join or renew your membership to the WCHA so that services like this can continue. See https://www.woodencanoe.org/about to learn more about the WCHA and https://www.woodencanoe.org/shop to donate or renew.

It is also possible that you could have another number or manufacturer if this description doesn't match the canoe. The splined cane seats may be original if they have square corners. Hand caned seats were replaced with the manufactured cane alternative as a result of the introduction of minimum wage in the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. Feel free to reply here if you have any other questions.

Benson