Appearance of a painted Peterborough?

[mccloud]

Peterborough offered all-wood, longitudinal strip built canoes either as varnished cedar or painted cedar, and painted was cheaper. "Three coats of lead paint inside, four coats outside, standard colors red and green" read the catalog description. So for a cheaper canoe, I have to assume not much time was spent in filling and fairing. What did the outside of a painted hull look like? Were 3,000 dimples visible on the painted hull? Tom McCloud

 

[Michael Grace]

Hi Tom,

From the ones I know, it seems these canoes were built much like varnished ones - they were fastened and faired like the others, but in neither case, to my knowledge was a filler used. So yes, the dimples from the fastener heads show in the paint. It looks fine, just as a varnished canoe does. On the other hand, the painted versions were often iron-fastened which leads to its own problems from rusting of the fasteners. Of course one could be well-preserved but most that I've seen suffer from "iron sickness". Even so, they're still all-wood canoes and very useful in good condition, and because they seem to be fairly uncommon relative to copper-nailed, varnished versions, I like their illustration of history.

Michael

 

[mccloud]

Thanks, Michael. Your answer convinces me that I have primed and sanded QUITE enough! With luck this canoe will be at assembly. Hope you stop by, inspect it, and we can talk. Tom McCloud

 

[Michael Grace]

Looking forward to seeing it, Tom. I'll bet it will be beautiful! I wish I could remember whose it was, but probably more than a decade ago I saw a painted all-wood Canadian canoe at Assembly; the exterior was white and it had several huge red maple leaves, one behind the other down the length of the keel. They spanned bilge to bilge, and it was quite spectacular.