The Old Town canoe with serial number 84114 is a 16 foot long, CS (Common Sense or middle) grade, HW (heavy water) model with open spruce gunwales, birch decks, birch thwarts, birch seats, a keel, and sponsons. It was built between March and April, 1924. The original exterior paint color was dark green. It shipped on May 27th, 1924 to Chicago, Illinois.
The Old Town canoe with serial number 27300 is a 17 foot long, AA (or top) grade, Ideal model with red western cedar planking, open mahogany gunwales, mahogany decks, mahogany thwarts, mahogany seats, half ribs, a keel, and outside stems. It was built in June, 1913. The original exterior paint color was moss green. It shipped on June 30th, 1913 to Three Lakes, Wisconsin.
The Old Town canoe with serial number 18368 is a 17 foot long, CS (common sense or middle) grade Charles River model with red western cedar planking, closed spruce gunwales, birch decks, ash thwarts, ash seats, spruce finish rails, a keel, and a middle thwart. It was built in July, 1911. The original exterior paint color was dark green. It was shipped on August 1st, 1911 to Herkimer, New York.
The Old Town canoe with serial number 16783 is a 16 foot long, CS (Common Sense or middle) grade, HW (heavy water) model with red western cedar planking, closed spruce gunwales, ash decks, ash thwarts, ash seats, spruce finish rails, a keel, and sponsons. It was built between January and April, 1911. The original exterior paint color was dark green. It shipped on April 27th, 1911 to Cleveland, Ohio.
The Old Town canoe with serial number 76518 is a 16 foot long, CS (common sense or middle) grade, Yankee model with open spruce gunwales, birch decks, birch thwarts, birch seats, and a keel. It was built between February and March, 1923. The original exterior paint color was yellow with a black border stripe and an orange stripe with turned down(?) ends. It was shipped on May 9th, 1923 to Los Angles, California.
Scans of these build records can be found by following the links behind the thumbnail images attached below. These scans 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 will renew your membership to the WCHA so that services like this can continue. See
http://www.wcha.org/about-the-wcha/ to learn more about the WCHA and
http://store.wcha.org/WCHA-New-Membership.html to join.
It is also possible that you could have another number or manufacturer if these descriptions don't match your canoes. Several of the lengths don't match so the information at
http://forums.wcha.org/showthread.php?791 may help you confirm the serial numbers. Can you provide pictures of the numbers from each end with the surrounding areas? Some images showing the decks and interior could also be useful, along with a confirmation of the extreme overall length in a straight line. Feel free to reply here if you have any other questions. Thanks,
Benson
