Old Town Sponsons

[Steve Ambrose]

While pulling sponsons off an OT/Carleton (?) yesterday I got to wondering how they were put together. My reverse engineering of how they came off makes me think OT laid an extra piece of canvas against the hull, attached the stations to the hull, nailed the strips to the stations, then wrapped and trimmed the canvas or did they build the entire sponson then attach it?

Rebuilding the sponsons and canvassing off the hull seems like it would be extremely difficult.

 

[H.E. Pennypacker]

That's correct - built on the canoe. This is really the only way because of slight differences in placement of ribs from canoe to canoe and from one side of the canoe to the other. You can see this for yourself if you take two or more sets of sponsons from a single type of canoe (Say an OT HW) and try to fit them onto one canoe - the D-shaped blocks will land in different places, sometimes not allowing attachment to the ribs (I've done this, trying to find which sponsons belong with which canoe).

Some seem to think canvassing sponsons is tough, but not really. Just tack sponson canvas in place on the already-canvassed canoe, then screw on sponsons, then canvas and fill. It's really pretty easy. You should be pleasantly surprised.

 

[Steve Ambrose]

What do you do at the ends with the 3-4" vertical? Tuck it under the end block and then tack the whole thing down?

 

[Dave Osborn]

Steve,
I tuck it, tack it, and use fairing compound to smooth out the sponson to canoe transition on the ends.
Dave