Restoration started on 16 foot Serial Number 164128 Old Town CA 1957

oldboatguy

New Member
Obtained this canoe from the Great Lakes Maritime Heritage Society in Traverse City, Michigan, in 2011. My intentions are to restore it to original type. It is a green fibreglass over wooden strips. Not sure if this is original? Fibreglass in 1957? Maybe not? Anyone out there have any ideas as to the fibreglass over the outer planking originality? I have the seat s and the support bars. The seats had cane with splines , in rectagular configuration. The serial number is only on one of the stem ends. Did this canoe have a floor made of cedar strips? I need to know this. Thanks
 
Old Town serial number 164128 belonged to a 15-foot long CS (or common sense) grade 50-pounder model that was built in 1955 and shipped to Flint, Michigan, in 1956. It was a wood-and-canvas canoe, no fiberglass. It had a keel and the original color was dark green.

If you're interested in removing the fiberglass and restoring the canoe, check some of the other topics on this forum. There are lots of people here who can help you, and you might also want to look at the books for sale through the WCHA.

The scan of this record is attached below-- click on it to get a larger image. 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/ot_records/ if you want more details. I hope that you and anyone else reading this will join or renew membership in the WCHA so that services like this can continue. See http://www.wcha.org/wcha/ to learn more about the WCHA and http://www.wcha.org/join.php to renew.

If you are selling your canoe and plan to use this build record information as part of an ad, please consider giving the WCHA credit for this information on eBay or craigslist or wherever your canoe is listed.

It is also possible that you could have another number or manufacturer if this description doesn't match your canoe. Feel free to reply here if you have any other questions.

Norm
 

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Did this canoe have a floor made of cedar strips? I need to know this.

The floor of this canoe was made of western red cedar planking with white eastern cedar ribs as described at http://www.wcha.org/catalogs/old-town/specific.gif but the record that Norm posted previously shows that it did not originally have a floor rack of cedar strips. Fiberglass canoes did not appear in the Old Town catalogs until 1965. Please reply here if this doesn't answer your question. Good luck with the restoration,

Benson
 
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