Can anyone identify this canoe? Thompson?

[Howie]

Hi guys. Just picked up this canoe from the Adirondacks. The fella says it belonged to his father & uncle, and they believe it to be a Thompson circa 1910. Here are some pics:

It's 14 1/2 feet x 33 3/4" max width to outside the gunnals. Ribs are untapered and measure 1 3/4" x 5/16" and spaced at 3 3/8" repeat. Single thwart. Bow seat uses 2 wood spacer parts rather than 4 dowels. Rib ends are covered. Decks are 1 1/4" thick and heart shaped. The ribs appear to be white cedar as do the planking - definitely not red cedar. As you can see from the pics the planking appear to be untapered except for the top 2 pieces at the top center of the canoe. There's no serial # visible on the stems.
Any thoughts?

 

[Kathryn Klos]

Appears Canadian to me. Chestnut?

 

[Dan Miller]

Not a Thompson. It is (most likely) one of the "Huron" builders from Quebec.

 

[Andre Cloutier]

Maybe they bought it from a guy named Thomson, but thats a huron all day long. Kind of looks like a Picard.

 

[KAT]

Pull the gunwale cap strip off and they may be arrowhead decks. I have/had two like that, Bastien Bros Huron I believe.

 

[davelanthier]

What you have is a circa 1970 Huron canoe These were First Nation's built, as a cottage industry, on their reserve at Village de Huron, Quebec, Canada. Widely sold in Canada mostly by Simpson Sears. They were advertised as being 6" longer than they actually were. It is not a Thompson or Picard. I have restored many and have a 16' [ 15.5' ] advertised on the WCHA classifieds site.

 

[Howie]

I guess it's 'case closed'. Thanks for the replies everybody.

 

[Howie]

Quick question since some of you have restored some of these before....
1) Do you restore with or without the strip of wood over the ribs? I'm leaning to omit them - seems to me covered ribs make it harder for water to drain out.
2) Did they typically have brass stem bands? This one doesn't. In fact the stems are down right stubby & ugly!
I figured I'd add a strip of wood to the outside of the stems to make them pointier & add the stem bands. Plus some cherry for the decks. I figure it'd never sell if it doesn't get prettified a bit!

 

[davelanthier]

The wood strip is the same width as the inwale so it shouldnt cover any ribs. I consider it a sacrificial strip which protects the soft inwales from damage and covers the deck to inwale joins. Further, you will have the inwale nail holes left by the cap strip to deal with if you don't replace it. The brass stem bands were 1/2" wide x 40" long. I will often instal the bow seat spacers on the rear seat to lower it. The bow seat then gets new, deeper spacers. Since all the seat and thwart bolt heads are covered by the inwale cap I will install recessed 1/4" carriage bolts for the center thwart. This allows it to be easily removed if carrying yoke is later required.

 

[KAT]

The first Huron I had needed a lot of work which included inwales, which I did in ash. It was just under 15 feet and I turned it into a solo boat first, then tandemized it after I sold it last year. They are nice paddling boats, just were a little more common up here. There is much you can do with it. I did the decks in maple, brass stem bands, no cap strip, cherry outwales.

I now have a 14 footer, which is actually 13 1/2 foot long in much worse shape but will be fun to bring back to life.

 

[Howie]

Nice job. Any reason you cut the inwales short and made up the space with the deck? I mean it looks great, but do you see any construction advantage to do it this way?

 

[KAT]

That is the way a Bastien Bros Huron is built originally. The cap strip would hide the unusual inwale/deck joint. Although when I replaced the inwales I could have taken them all the way to the stem like on most other boats, I chose to keep it original in design. To get the deck just right, before I started cutting the Maple I made pine templates and fit them then transferred the shape and cut out the maple carefully.