Last weekend we showed our canoe at the Wood and Classic Boat show at the Pentwater Yacht Club in Michigan. One of the other participants was showing what he said was an OT "guide boat" The ends were shaped like an Adirondack guideboat and it was fitted out with oars and seat similar to a guideboat, but it was of typical OT wood and canvas construction. It had a serial number, which I didn't record, on the bow stem. He didn't know much about the boat except that it was supposedly built in the 1940s and he understood that OT only built a few of them. Does anyone have any info on this type, such as the number built and the timeframe of their building?
Old Town "guide boat"
- Thread starter MIpaddlr
- Start date
The canvas-covered double-end boats were listed in the Old Town catalogs from 1901 to 1971. It is estimated that about 1709 examples of this model were made between 1906 and 1968 which works out to an average of around 27 per year. This is slightly more common than the 13 foot long version of the fifty pound model canoe which is 17th on the list at https://www.wcha.org/catalogs/old-town/models.html for example. The description from the 1920 catalog is shown below. Let me know if this doesn't answer your question.
Benson
Benson
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