patrick corry
solo canoeist
I'd like some opinions here. I have a 1957 Old Town 50#er in the shop. Other than having lovely D-shaped mahogany outwales, there's nothing remarkable about the canoe. It has Ash decks, one lobe of which has been chewed by some sort of rodent. I have several ideas about cutting out the damage and gluing in a repair but I wonder if there are other approaches I should consider.
Here is the deck and a pattern I made prior to any cutting. The deck still has some varnish; not yet removed, and I'll likely also repair the tip with a scarfed-in bit of Ash to replace a bit of rot on the underside seen in the following picture.
My first thought is to cut parallel to the grain (fore and aft blue line) to hopefully mask the glue line, but that means removing a significant bit of the deck. The cut could also be made on a bevel (red line)- thereby increasing the glue surface but still retaining the parallel glue line on top of the deck. The obvious downside to that is that the end grain appearance of the deck has an increased joint line.
Or, I could cut at a random angle on the top surface, either a straight cut or bevel but it seems the downside here is the very obvious glue joint line viewed from the top which is way more obvious it seems to me than the 'parallel' joint.
I wonder if there are other alternatives I haven't thought of?
Here is the deck and a pattern I made prior to any cutting. The deck still has some varnish; not yet removed, and I'll likely also repair the tip with a scarfed-in bit of Ash to replace a bit of rot on the underside seen in the following picture.
My first thought is to cut parallel to the grain (fore and aft blue line) to hopefully mask the glue line, but that means removing a significant bit of the deck. The cut could also be made on a bevel (red line)- thereby increasing the glue surface but still retaining the parallel glue line on top of the deck. The obvious downside to that is that the end grain appearance of the deck has an increased joint line.
Or, I could cut at a random angle on the top surface, either a straight cut or bevel but it seems the downside here is the very obvious glue joint line viewed from the top which is way more obvious it seems to me than the 'parallel' joint.
I wonder if there are other alternatives I haven't thought of?
