Congratulations on finding this beautiful old canoe! I was struck by the pictures you posted, because I am currently restoring a courting canoe for a customer, and up until now we have not been able to ID it. We knew it was from the Charles River area, but the builder was unknown. It appears to be identical to your Arnold in every way, so perhaps we have a good clue to follow up on. Our canoe was in much worse shape than yours - serious rib, plank, stem, and inwale repairs were required. The big decks were original solid mahogany, but they and all of the topside mahogany were in such bad shape that we made the decision to replace them all. We ended up using a built up panel for the decks - two very thin mahogany veneer layers (top and bottom) over a solid mahogany core - total thickness of about 0.20 inch. We used a beautifully figured and bookmatched veneer for the top of each panel. The nice part about this aproach is that the cut edges look and act like solid mahogany, not plywood. Solid mahogany was used for all rail caps,kingplanks, and coaming pieces, and we were able to rehabilitate the original outwale strips. We are now in the final varnishing stages - I will try to post a few pictures in the next day or so - perhaps someone can help with a positive ID. I would be happy to discuss any of this in more detail, as you start to think about planning your restoration project. LEW