TRIANGLES AND OTHER REPEATING DESIGNS
Painting Old Town’s design number 4, or any design with a repeated pattern running the length of the hull, requires certain amount obsessive-compulsiveness in the painter’s personality. There is a lot of careful detail work called for when laying out and masking such a pattern. Some people use stencils for such patterns, but I do not, as I will explain later.
Old Town’s design 4 is a series of large, alternating-colored down-pointing triangles placed right under the outwale (red and blue in design 4), with smaller, up-pointing triangles of one color (blue in design 4) filling in between the larger triangles, separated from the large triangles by a space the same color as the hull (white in design 4). I have seen pictures of it done in red and black.
(picture courtesy of Benson Gray)
The following is how I laid out and painted a modification of design 4.
First, I determined the number and size of the large triangles, and then the size of the small triangles and the amount of space separating the triangles. In my modified design, my triangles are larger than those of OT’s traditional design 4, but as the forum discussion at
http://forums.wcha.org/showthread.ph...light=triangle makes clear, even Old Town varied the triangle sizes -- there are no canonical dimensions, unless attempting to replicate one particular canoe. I estimated that about 4"-4 1/2" would be a good height for my larger triangles. The sheer under the gunwales of my canoe is about 174” and after some guessing and trial and error, I determined the approximate length of the triangle base (about 7 1/4”), then figured out how many triangles I would have. For my design, I decided on 24 large “down” triangles.
I used green Frog masking tape, finding it much better than ordinary blue tape (even 3M blue tape) -- but I understand that the 3M fineline tape Gil mentions above is much better, and I will try it next time I’m masking a design.
Once I chose a height for the large triangles, I marked out a line parallel to the sheer along the length of the hull -- I used a short “story stick” to mark multiple pencil dots along the hull, and then connected those dots with ¾” green tape. This line of tape parallel to the sheer of the canoe forms the base of the small “up” triangles and marks the tip of the “down” triangles.
Because masking tape has a certain amount of flexibility, it is not hard to get a fair curve when placing the tape while following the marked dots. I then ran a line of wide blue tape under the green tape just to provide extra protection for the hull in case of a slip of the paint brush.
Using a pencil, I then marked out the width of the 24 larger triangles along the sheer line with a pencil, right on the outer rail. It is in this task that many people have trouble. Because measuring the curved sheer under the gunwale is difficult, and because the exact starting and ending point for measuring are not necessarily clear on an old and somewhat worn canoe, your measurement of the length is likely to contain an error, and therefore any dimension you figure by simply dividing this sheer measurement by the number of triangles will contain an error. If you start laying out triangles at one end of the canoe, whether by measuring or by using a template, all of the error will accumulate and show up at the other end – either your last triangle won’t fit, or your row of triangles will be too short. And it doesn’t take much of an error to make a big difference. An error in the base length of your triangle of only 1/16" would result in an accumulated error of 1 ½" in a 24 triangle pattern like that on my 15' canoe.
(because the picture was not taken square on, the pencil marks on the outer rail may seem to be out of position, but they are accurate when viewed straight on.)
Instead, to minimize error and keep it from accumulating in one spot, mark the center point of the sheer line. Now you have to fill each half -- in my case, with 12 triangles. But again, I did not just start running the triangles from the middle to the bow and stern. I put another mark at the half-way point between the middle and the bow, and the middle and the stern, and then divided each of those sections in half again, giving me eight sections to fill with three triangles each, by simply dividing each space in three. This way, any error is spread more or less equally among all of the triangles, and any fudging that may be needed is small, easily done, and just not noticeable. If one of your triangle bases is 4 1/4” long, and the adjoining one is 4 5/16” long, no one will know but you, and even you will not be able to see the difference on the completed job. If working with an odd number of triangles (as you probably should -- see below), mark out one triangle over the center point, then divide the remaining space on either side of it as just described.
Now locate the point of the large “down” triangle. Place a small try square under the gunwale with the corner of the square at the center of each triangle. Mark the point where the arm of the square crosses the long masking tape base line -- this point is the tip of the large “down” triangle. Then outline the triangles with the masking tape. Trim the ends of the tape pieces to points meeting under the gunwale, making sure that the tape ends overlap. The tape is then run down to the point on the base line that had been marked with the square. See picture above.
The “up” triangles are smaller than the larger “down” triangles by the width of the masking tape -- wider tape will give you smaller “up” triangles. On design 4 as painted by OT, the small triangles are much smaller than in my modified design. I used ¾” tape to create a ¾” separation; I could have used wider tape or doubled up the tape I had, but I like the smaller separation and larger “up” triangles. Again, I was not shooting for a reproduction of design 4, but rather, just using it as a jumping off point for my modified design.
It is necessary to burnish well the edges of the green masking tape to keep paint from bleeding in under the tape -- and even then, some bleeding occurred because I did not burnish firmly enough. On a later job I used the barrel of a ball-point pen and rubbed hard, and had much less bleed through. For the bleed through, I took an artist's brush and cut the lines by hand as needed to eliminate the blurring; I also filled in small missed spots under the rail by hand.
While it pays to take care in marking out the triangles, absolute precision is not needed -- no one will notice if the base of one triangle is 1/16" or even 1/8" different from the triangle next to it, even close up. The width of the masking tape takes care of the uniformity of the width of the separation of the triangles, and a well-taped baseline takes care of the uniformity of their height.
I subsequently modified the triangle design on this canoe, with 32 smaller triangles all the same size, with no separation between them:
I first taped a line parallel to the sheer and painted a wide green stripe. I then laid out the magenta and blue “down” triangles as above. After painting them, and removing the tape, the green stripe had changed into green “up” triangles between the “down” triangles.
After I started painting this pattern, I became aware that I should have used an odd number of “down” triangles to get the end triangles the same color. Rather than start over, I merely painted the two center triangles the same color -- I don’t think anybody ever noticed, and it was handy to have a clearly-marked center point when placing the canoe on my car roof rack.
