How did Morris/Veazie build long-deck canoes?

[Howie]

Has any one out there restored or own(ed) a ‘long-deck’ Morris or Veazie? If so, I could use some advice. And pictures.

My good buddy Mike (MGC) gifted me a 16’ Veazie ‘long-deck’ last year (I wrote about it in a Forum last April). I’ve started to dig into it and have found a sea of problems (everything from the rails on up is rotted and needs replacing), but what I’m writing about here is the understructure below the decking.

Here’s a pic of the long-deck as yet unmolested except that the rail caps have been removed. The deck is actually made of two pieces, and has screws holding the outer edges to the inner rails. And underneath the decorative wood trim tacked to the center of the two deck pieces are screws holding the deck pieces center edges to something below.

My problem is with this ‘something below’. You can see from the pics below that there is a “C” shaped thwart that supports the part of the deck that abuts the coaming strip. Then there it is a sort of arrowhead shaped chunk of wood that supports the center of the two deck pieces. Its pointy end was tacked on each side to the first two ribs, while the other end was nailed to the curved thwart thingie. You can see that this chunk of wood has cuts on its top & bottom which allowed it to be easily shaped to the canoes up-bend profile at the tips, and its sides are beveled at 45deg to match the cut in the inner rails. Of course none of these inner parts were ever varnished, and so the arrow-head part is toast.

At first I questioned whether this arrow-head part was original – it just seems like an amateur way of attaching the long-decks given that the canoe is a Morris/Veazie. I figured someone lopped off the ends of the inner rails and made this arrowhead part with cuts in to so he would have to steam-bend it to shape. Plus I haven’t even mentioned that the two (mahogany) long-deck parts were glued? or epoxied? to it - I had to chisel away the decks to free them.

But now I’m not so sure. I'm wondering if this is original. Mike tells me that this is the only Veazie long-deck known to exist. Might someone at Morris have hacked it together like this to fill a special order? Or maybe this is the way Morris always made long decks?

Anybody out there know? Or have an opinion?

 

[Gil Cramer]

My opinion- not original.

 

[Michael Grace]

Hello Howie. I cannot possibly believe that this construction is original. It looks like nothing I've seen on longer-decked Morris canoes, and I've never seen this "glue" material under the original decking of any canoe. Plus the "quality" (if you can call it that) is not at all Morris. I think far more likely this is a repair job. Oh, two more things: (1) deck panels are usually put one with nails, in my experience, and (2) at least some Morris long-decked canoes started out as short-decked canoes, and the original deck was left in place when farming up for the longer deck panels. See:

B.N. Morris Decks and Deck Framing

On page 99 of Katheryn's book, The Morris Canoe, there is mention and a picture of short decks having been discovered under thr canoe's long decks, indicating the morphing of type 1 to a type 3. When I disassembled my Morris project years ago, I saw the short decks, which from my other boat...

forums.wcha.org

Hope this helps,
Michael

 

[MGC]

Michael and Gil are both right. That is a cob job.... Morris, would have built the framing for the deck over the short deck...just like the way that Rushton I gave you was done. Have you pulled the other deck apart? Is it also kluged?
I'm thinking that when they glassed the canoe in 1958 that there were other problems (these) that they sorted out.
And yes, that is, as far as I know, the only Veazie branded long deck. If anyone is aware of another, I'd love to hear about it.
I haven't had time to stop by recently. Once I get done teaching my fall classes I'll head down to Petes for some shells and pay you a visit.

 

[Howie]

The other side is the same:

 

[Todd F]

Will try to get some pics of a relatively long deck Morris pics soon. Initial look from when I picked it up looked far different from what you have.

 

[Howie]

Michael: Boy, I can't thank you enough for the reference link you give above to a Forum comment made by Paul Scheuer in 2015 which included 4 pics from Katheryn's book The Morris Canoe. But not for the reason you might think...

The canoe I'm now working on is the 3rd Morris I've gotten my hands on, and all of them were the type where the ribs fitted into pockets milled into the inner rails. This is a terrible design mechanically as these pockets are like knots in the wood - when stressed the rails will crack at the side walls of these pockets. So to counter this Morris made the rails wider. But this extra thickness makes the rails very hard to bend (at least for me!). And both inner rails on this canoe are half rotten, so I gotta completely replace them both. So not only do I have to replace both rails - a hard enough job to do on any canoe - I'd also have to somehow bore the holes for all those ribs in exactly the right place to line up with the existing ribs. Well, that's not quite true... I'm going to have to splice on new tips to all the ribs because there's not enough undamaged wood to hold new ring nails (why the hell did Morris use tacks on the ribs anyway?), thus positioning of the bored slots becomes less critical.

But the link to Paul Scheuer's Forum comment shows 4 pictures of the way Morris made the superstructure for long deck canoes. And looking closely I see two pictures that clearly show the ribs attaching to the sides of the inner rails and not in pockets. Yay! Since Morris used this side mount design at some point in its production cycle I feel justified in using the same method on this canoe. The job is now do-able.

So thanks!

 

[MGC]

Howie, I happen to have an original Morris short deck that you may use to model replacements if you are interested but it is of the newer style.
Keep in mind that what Paul's images show are the "newer" post 1912 oval 1912 decks.
I have not been able to confirm the exact delivery date of that canoe nor have I been able to confirm that it was new from the factory when it was delivered. The owners journal entries did not offer a specific date. My current thinking is that it was delivered before 1909.
Can you tell what deck style was under the hideous repair? That would help pin down the approximate time period. Presuming that Veazie production began in 1905/6, and based upon the low serial number, that seems very possible.
It's worth mentioning the tag number on that boat. It's 320.
Mike

 

[Howie]

Hi Mike. There's no hint left of what the original deck looked like. And thanks for the offer for using your deck as a model, but I don't need it as I kept a beat up deck from a Veazie I restored a few years ago. At least I think I did... have to check to be sure.

And yeah yeah, I know you'd prefer to keep the boat as original as possible re the rib tips & inner rail interaction. But either I do it the way I described or I give up on it. If you want to give it a try and keep it original I'm more than happy for you to have it back. Honest!

 

[MGC]

Ha...I've broken through. You are thinking about the details.
If I were working on that boat it would never get done. My obsessive perfectionist tendencies would turn that project into a nightmare. That's why you have it. Do your thing and do what it needs to get it back into the water looking as it once did. Whatever you do will be masterful in contrast to what you have revealed was done to it in 1959 (no 8 as I had noted). It hid it's problems pretty well.
I'm with you regarding some of Morris methods. Some of his construction ideas are hard to explain.

 

[Dave Wermuth]

If you were to replace the inwales you could deviate from pockets to a full rabbet in the inwale. However Dave Osborn and Ferdy Goode replaced an inwale exactly like it should be for Kathryn if I recall correctly. Dave could explain. Forstner bit comes to mind.

 

[Howie]

DAVE: yeah, I've got the right size Forstner bit for the job. I used if on the 2 other Morris's I restored. You just need to clamp a block to the inhale and drill on the center of two. So yeah, part of the problem is where to drill. But the main problem with this canoe for me is bending 1-1/8" wood! I have enough trouble with 7/8"!