St Louis Meraco Speedster- 1925?

Gil Cramer

The wooden canoe Shop, Inc.
17'0" Meraco Speedster with canvas deck and invisible sponsons. Based on stem profile and length, my best guess is 1925. It has a skeg, scalloped transom top, keelson screwed only into the ribs, half ribs and a floor rack. The two forward seats are under the seat stringer, and the rear seat is on top of the stringer; probably because it was too hard to drill holes for machine screws.Thanks to Wally Hauck for the correct decal.
 

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more photos

More photos of the speedster.
 

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The scalloped transom top piece covered the canvas where it wrapped around the sponsons. The scalloping was simply for looks, I guess. Other speedsters have somewhat different scalloping. With the owners approval, the transom sandwich was changed to cover the entire transom so that the bottom canvas would not need to be tucked under and bedded flush with transom, but wrapped around onto the transom. This cuts down on leaking and is similar to how Thompson Bros. did it.
In order to keep the scalloped look, 1/2" thick cherry was used to cover the entire transom, and a 1/2" thick piece was applied to the top duplicating the original scalloping and keeping the same total thickness of the top, 2".
 
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