New to group with a question(s)

[ffergie]

Hello all, great group you have here, should be good for many hours of reading.
I am the owner of what I was told was a Chestnut canoe but when I took it to a local canoe shop for a restoration, the owner tells me that it is not a Chestnut because the ribs in a Chestnut have beveled edges; although when he first saw the profile he thought it was a Chestnut Ogilvy. I am only mildly disappointed because the boat paddles like a dream so she will be restored anyway. This brings me to my question: is there any way that a canoe's lineage can be identified with any certainty? Is is possible to post pics or dimensions to this forum and have some of the more knowledgeable members attempt to dissect the boats ancestry? If this is possible, what areas should the pics show? Also, the boat had been canvas but at some point was glassed over; am I going to run into problems if I tell the builder to canvas her instead of glass?
Thanks in advance
Frank

 

[Larry Meyer]

Post some pictures and take some measurements. I have an Ogilvy. They're pretty easy to pick out. Every Ogilvy I have seen, a few, have a lot of wide unbeveled ribs. Ribs maybe spaced a thumb's width apart. Also a wide center thwart.

 

[Greg Nolan]

Certainly post pictures – not only do we all love pictures, they are a great help to those of us (not me) who are good at identifying canoes.

Click on the “insert image” icon when replying or when first posting – run your cursor slowly over the icons and text will pop up telling what each icon does – and a screen appears letting you browse to find the photo file you want from your computer. Chose your photo and upload it. The photo file must be 488 kb or less.

Photos that can help with id include a profile of the bow, profile of the whole canoe, a close-up of the deck area, the inside stem area, seats, thwarts, planking pattern (if the canvas is off), and anything that might seem unusual or idiosyncratic. Sometimes serial numbers help, but many canoes never had them, and of those that did, they can be missing, or in some cases, are not really any help with identification.

Dimensions also help – overall length, beam, and depth – but dimensions may not match catalog specs exactly because canoes often change shape and dimensions a bit over the years, and because sometimes they did not match catalog specs exactly even when brand new.

And sometimes you end up just not knowing who built you canoe – many of us have ufos -- unidentified floating objects – but paddling like a dream, as you say yours does, goes a long way to offsetting not knowing the builder – it’s better to know that your unknown builder was a good builder, than to find out that your know builder didn’t build so well.