Plastic and Fiberglass

[Glenn MacGrady]

Glenn,

I can't talk for Mike,
but as far as I am concerned, it's all one site, with the Forum just a piece of the WCHA site.
I had no idea that they are on different servers and admin'ed by different people.

And to be honest I don't really care about the "mechanics", other then it needs to be very easy, and only care about the content (usually hitorical things).
I will say that I gloss over most strings, only opening the few that I find interesting, either triggered by content or the person posting.

BTW - back when we were doing trips to the BWCA, I was a frequent visitor to sites like BWCA.com, CCR and a few others, but as I've aged and not able to go on trips, I very rarely visit those sites anymore.
I suspect this site is going down that same road.

Thanks, Dan. I'm a geezer too.

Yes, the Forum is a part of the entire WCHA website in general. Benson and Dan Miller are the technical administrators ("mechanics") of the Forum, although Benson has done a lot more of the day to day administration than Dan in the year I've been on the board. Colleen Hovey, a board member, is the technical administrator responsible for the rest of the website.

I realize that much wooden canoe info now resides on Dan's personal Wooden Canoe Museum, but I was fishing for any ideas from you, or Mike, or anyone else, as to how the Forum or the rest of the entire website could be improved as to information, content or structure. The WCHA is now in a stronger financial position than it was a few years ago to make expenditures, and we're always open to any ideas to improve our online presence or anything else.

 

[MGC]

Dan, based upon your participation here and your interest in paddling, I suspect that you probably could speak for me.
Benson, to your point, I am no longer interested in making an argument to change anything. Dan's site is there. A path to it has been added that people seem to be finding. Drawing attention to the absence of this accessible content here did not accomplish much more than adding that link and a shower of terse exchanges. It is what it is. My view of what WCHA might offer to the wooden canoe community is reflected perfectly well in Dan's site. That is why I support it. But, my view really doesn't matter much in the grand scheme of things. Our board sets the tone. Hopefully we can continue to have a board that can give focus to "sharing information about canoeing heritage throughout the world."
I know that you and Dan have spoken at length about preserving (both of) your collections and work. It's in your hands directly. The one thing I would love to see return to this site is the Old Town Research that was once located in the "History" radio buttons. I always regarded that work as a proper benchmark for what this organization can do.

Glenn, as you may have surmised, I make no particular distinction between forum and site. One would not exist without the other. Both should share purpose and objectives. When I ran engineering projects, I always had my software, electrical, mechanical engineering folks seated at the same table along with my production, finance, sales/marketing and IP folks. We ran our programs as one. Once we set our top-level plan in place, we went off to do our own specialized work to satisfy the overall plan and goals. We would come back together to measure progress and course correct as necessary. I presume the WCHA board works in that fashion.
Mike

 

[MGC]

I was fishing for any ideas from you, or Mike, or anyone else, as to how the Forum or the rest of the entire website could be improved as to information, content or structure.

Several months ago I exchanged several emails with Colleen (I think) about the classifieds.
Some fabulous and some scarce canoes have been offered there. When they are, they are often accompanied by excellent photos and information. When they are sold, they are removed.
These adds with the photos and content should be preserved and made accessible. What a great tool these could be for people researching canoes. Even Dan's site does not have anything resembling the quality of the images we have in our classifieds.
If I could ask for one thing, I would ask that all of the listings that have been posted on this site and then subsequently removed be returned, ideally in a searchable format.

 

[Todd F]

OK, so I am the new guy. I found this site after retiring, realizing I needed a hobby for many reasons, purchasing a canoe I saw on CL for several months, and the older gent said this site will answer all my questions. It does...so far! I look at a few other sites but this and Dans are the most relevant to me. I like Dans site when I am looking at historical info; I like this site for the general community and collaboration. Both work for me.

Like Chris P I tend to be a bit "enthusiastic" when I do things. If nothing else this site and the acceptance / tolerance / support of non wood and canvas canoe questions is inspiring. While I grew up banging around plastic and aluminum boats I continue to gain an appreciation for the craftsmanship and the dedication of the current restorers of the wooden boats from years gone by and the newer ones out there. My questions and comments have been insightfully and respectfully addressed, I am encouraged each time I read each new post.

 

[Benson Gray]

The one thing I would love to see return to this site is the Old Town Research that was once located in the "History" radio buttons.

I just went searching back thorugh the older versions of the wcha.org web site using the Wayback Machine and didn't find the "History" radio buttons you mentioned. Can you provide some more details about the Old Town Research that they provided? I can probably bring it back if I know more about what I'm looking for. Dan has a great summary at the link below. Thanks,

Benson

Old Town Canoe Company | Wooden Canoe Museum

woodencanoemuseum.org

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

Several months ago I exchanged several emails with Colleen (I think) about the classifieds.
Some fabulous and some scarce canoes have been offered there. When they are, they are often accompanied by excellent photos and information. When they are sold, they are removed.
These adds with the photos and content should be preserved and made accessible. What a great tool these could be for people researching canoes. Even Dan's site does not have anything resembling the quality of the images we have in our classifieds.
If I could ask for one thing, I would ask that all of the listings that have been posted on this site and then subsequently removed be returned, ideally in a searchable format.

I'm just doing some personal and very preliminary mental noodling with you here.

You think the images of probably some subset of the canoes that appear in the classified ads are worth preserving on the website somewhere as a historical research and aesthetic resource. I can't speak for the text of the ads, and I'm not sure without researching what the licensing terms are for pictures that are uploaded to the Classifieds. We do have a license for images uploaded to the Forum. See the "Terms and Rules" link at the bottom of this page.

The Xenforo software platform that runs this discussion forum includes a feature called Media Gallery where members can upload albums of pictures. I suppose it could be possible, if we have a legal license to do so, to load all the Classified Ad photos after they are sold into an album in the Media Gallery. I don't know if text can be added to Media Gallery photos because I don't have experience with Media Gallery; I don't have it on my site.

However, if you contact the Forum technical administrators, they may know the answers or know how to find them. It's something to consider. If it can be done, technically and legally, and if it seems to make sense as a content enhancer for the website, I'd be happy to bring a workable proposal to the board. It would cost someone time to set up and curate, but I'm not sure it would cost much money, if any.

 

[Dan Lindberg]

As I come back and see the recent posts/discussion,
I am reminded of why I think ALL info should be on the WCHA site and not just linked to Dan's site.

Some years ago an active member in MI had a VERY complete site on Chestnut canoes,
The site was created by Jack Wagner and the site name was "Jock Ogilvy' or something like that.
Anyway, I suspect he passed on (but don't know) and the site fell into disrepair, I don't even it's even still accessible,
but the point is, there was lots of good info there and now it's GONE.

The same thing could easily happen to Dan's site.
And then we would have NOTHING.

PS - I am also concerned about this with the "Seliga Build Record" - it would be a shame for it to disappear if I had a problem.
To date the record is just an MS Excel on my computer, I look at it and add to it on a fairly consistent basis.
But realistically it is fairly fragile. I have given copies to several but I doubt it would survive long without me.

 

[MGC]

Can you provide some more details about the Old Town Research that they provided? I can probably bring it back if I know more about what I'm looking for.

Sorry if I sent you on a wild goose chase. I don't exactly recall how the landing page and the layered supporting pages used to be set up. Getting to the Old Town data was always a bit convoluted. Dan's content does not include the material that I thought was interesting.
I dropped just a few examples that I happen to have on this PC towards the end of this post. The related discussion about how this research of the Old Town records was conducted by the WCHA was very interesting. Sadly, I did not copy that.

You think the images of probably some subset of the canoes that appear in the classified ads are worth preserving on the website somewhere as a historical research and aesthetic resource.

Yes, I do. I don't know how others feel about that but I often find myself browsing adds to find images of canoes I am interested in including build details. It's worth noting that canoes can be listed with incorrect attribution so it's not a rock-solid source, but it is a source. That is what lead me to suggest that.

As I come back and see the recent posts/discussion,
I am reminded of why I think ALL info should be on the WCHA site and not just linked to Dan's site.

Some years ago an active member in MI had a VERY complete site on Chestnut canoes,
The site was created by Jack Wagner and the site name was "Jock Ogilvy' or something like that.
Anyway, I suspect he passed on (but don't know) and the site fell into disrepair, I don't even it's even still accessible,
but the point is, there was lots of good info there and now it's GONE.

The same thing could easily happen to Dan's site.
And then we would have NOTHING.

PS - I am also concerned about this with the "Seliga Build Record" - it would be a shame for it to disappear if I had a problem.
To date the record is just an MS Excel on my computer, I look at it and add to it on a fairly consistent basis.
But realistically it is fairly fragile. I have given copies to several but I doubt it would survive long without me.

I am reminded of why I think ALL info should be on the WCHA site and not just linked to Dan's site.
Some years ago an active member in MI had a VERY complete site on Chestnut canoes,
The site was created by Jack Wagner and the site name was "Jock Ogilvy' or something like that.
Anyway, I suspect he passed on (but don't know) and the site fell into disrepair, I don't even it's even still accessible,
but the point is, there was lots of good info there and now it's GONE.
PS - I am also concerned about this with the "Seliga Build Record" - it would be a shame for it to disappear if I had a problem.
To date the record is just an MS Excel on my computer, I look at it and add to it on a fairly consistent basis.
But realistically it is fairly fragile. I have given copies to several but I doubt it would survive long without me.

I had a similar experience with old Mossberg 22 caliber firearms. There was a site that was incredibly detailed and full of impossible to find information about these. One day it ceased to exist. There was no pre-warning. It and all of the contents were gone. Luckily for me I had extracted the few bits I needed before that happened but the resource was no longer there.

Your Excell record should be on a shared drive somewhere so that it is not "stuck" on your PC.

 

[Dan Lindberg]

Ya, unfortunately the actual record contains a lot of personal data,
files that I have shared, either pdf files or actual the Excel file have been/have to be redacted to remove personal data.

Your Excell record should be on a shared drive somewhere so that it is not "stuck" on your PC.

 

[Benson Gray]

Some years ago an active member in MI had a VERY complete site on Chestnut canoes,
The site was created by Jack Wagner

Yes, Jack was active here for many years and the page at the link below indicates that he was using the picturetrail.com service to share his information. That has been taken over by CatalystApps but the Wayback Machine at https://web.archive.org/web/20041223223444/http://www.picturetrail.com/daveogilvy below has a copy. It appears that most of his information were scanned catalogs and the Wooden Canoe Museum at https://woodencanoemuseum.org/ has a good selection of these.

history tidbit?

That would be great to chat in person though, if you are back in the area between late May – yearly October let me know, I’m in Apsley doing research and writing during that period. Robert, some other time perhaps.............. I'll leave you with a few "History tid-bits."...

forums.wcha.org

The problems of archiving information like this, your Seliga spreadsheet, Dan's wooden canoe museum, or other data are difficult ones. I am grateful that you have kindly shared a copy of the redacted Seliga information with me and understand your concerns about the 'personal information' contained in your more complete version.

I don't exactly recall how the landing page and the layered supporting pages used to be set up. Getting to the Old Town data was always a bit convoluted.

This was once linked to an icon at the bottom of the old WCHA home page shown at https://forums.wcha.org/attachments/42117/ with "Historic Canoe Catalogs" as the title. The information is still hanging around on the WCHA web site although if it is no longer linked directly. I started the page at http://wcha.org/catalogs/ for the first version of the WCHA web site in the 1990s. Several of the links are now broken, some of the people mentioned have died, the design is woefully out dated, but much of the information there is still useful, so it has been left in place. Most of this information has also been reproduced in various Wooden Canoe articles.

The idea of making old classified listings available for research is an interesting one. The Canoe Photo Index forum was established here to help address part of that issue. However, this project could quickly turn into a huge curation job to manage and structure this information for easy searching. I have been saving the WCHA's classified advertisements since 1999 so can provide a huge amount of data if someone wants to take this on. The classifieds listed in the back of Wooden Canoe are another resource. This is a bigger project than I want to jump into right now. Let me know if anyone else does. Thanks,

Benson

 

[MGC]

The idea of making old classified listings available for research is an interesting one. The Canoe Photo Index forum was established here to help address part of that issue. However, this project could quickly turn into a huge curation job to manage and structure this information for easy searching.

I once had an instructional designer working for me who was wired to make every project into an enormous undertaking. Not taking anything away from his talent. I used to pick on him about that. We used to laugh about his habit of "turd polishing". Once we got him to truncate and focus, he was unquestionably my best designer. We'd let him rip it up on the big stuff and try to hold him back the rest of the time.

The picture gallery has been a bit of a dud. Folks have no motivation to populate it. But, to sell a canoe, you need pictures so the classified have been filled with great many images.
My suggestion is not to attempt to catalogue or structure them. That would take a tremendous amount of effort. I would simply flag old or sold images so that they drop to the end of the classifieds and leave them accessible.
Currently if a I report a canoe as sold, the images are removed from view.

I hadn't given the images in Wooden Canoe much thought.

 

[Benson Gray]

I would simply flag old or sold images so that they drop to the end of the classifieds and leave them accessible.

This sounds reasonable and I hope that Colleen will consider adding this. I am well aware of the project management struggles over 'how good is good enough,' 'does anyone really care,' and I have personally spent more time 'turd polishing' at work than I care to admit. It would not be dificult to pull out all of the classified pages from the old issues of Wooden Canoe. However, the pictures would probably be the highest value of an effort like this and the magazine didn't historically have many in the classifieds. I currently have several hundred megabytes of pictures from old web classifieds but they are all stored as email attachments. There may not be an easy way to convert all of these to an html page that would make any sense and be easy to search. Something else to ponder,

Benson

 

[MGC]

My designer and I used to laugh about what you get when you polish turds, "shiny turds".
I used to lean towards trying to take on everything but I eventually learned that much of what I thought was ultra important fell to the wayside if cost and earnings were the only focus.
I imagine your library of images attached to emails could be a staggering amount of work to extract but given your immersion in this website and WCHA, it may well be an archive worth pursuing. I used to hire grad students to do thankless work and ended up with some amazing results. I had a quote tool built that could take electronic component counts from a generic product type (cell phone, car radio, whatever) and burp out a complete assembly line layout with drawings, yields, pricing etc. and in literal minutes. It was so simple to use that we trusted our sales engineers to use it. The best part was that each time we entered a set of data into it, it would update the tables for the particular product category. The more we used it, the better it became. I think the student worked on it for one semester for graduate program credit. WCHA might consider a similar approach at some point. As I recall, University of Maine Orono was willing to help WCHA with graduate student resources for a previous project I approached them about... I can't recall what it was? The website a few iterations back?

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

My suggestion is not to attempt to catalogue or structure them. That would take a tremendous amount of effort. I would simply flag old or sold images so that they drop to the end of the classifieds and leave them accessible.

That's the way it's done on many discussion sites that have a Classifieds forum. The posts just stay there after the canoe or whatever is sold.

But it would be a nice research tool if the Classifieds pictures could be organized into albums and sub-albums in the Media Gallery and tagged. I don't know if that program can do this, but here's one idea: Have a master album called Historical Canoes. Then sub-albums within that for Old Town, Morris, Chestnut, etc. Then sub-sub-albums within each of those for pleasure canoes, courting canoes, sailing canoes, etc. Finally, put tags on each photo, such as deck, thwart, seat, decal, stem profile, etc. That would allow a researcher to look at all the decks of courting canoes, or all the stem profiles of White canoes, and so on.

It would certainly be a large effort to curate all the old photos and add the tags. However, if such a project were started just for the Classifieds photos going forward, that wouldn't be very burdensome, and in 10 years there would be a very nice library of curated, tagged, searchable and sortable photos.

 

[1905Gerrish]

As I view this thread a week after posting I see some good discussion and a few ideas that would be helpful to all. The direction of the discussion has taken a hard turn and I was honestly hoping more than a half a dozen people would speak up with almost 650 viewings about my original questions. Glenn, I am very happy to see you in this discussion as part of the WCHA leadership. Chris, past leadership and Benson, certainly always welcome to have you.

Could and should this discussion take place at the Assembly to get more feedback from members?

 

[Benson Gray]

Could and should this discussion take place at the Assembly to get more feedback from members?

Yes, having a discussion like this at the Assembly could involve a few hundred members. Writing a article for Wooden Canoe could reach the entire membership. It seems unlikely that you will find a consensus within any large group. Your original message in this thread suggested that there should be a new forum category for discussions about non-wood canoes. That is in place now. What else would you like?

Benson

 

[1905Gerrish]

Yes, having a discussion like this at the Assembly could involve a few hundred members. Writing a article for Wooden Canoe could reach the entire membership. It seems unlikely that you will find a consensus within any large group. Your original message in this thread suggested that there should be a new forum category for discussions about non-wood canoes. That is in place now. What else would you like?

Benson

Benson,
I saw, thanks for that. Where you asked, I would like more members to voice their opinion about this subject to get a feel for the membership. Then, possible leadership to make a decision accordingly. I'm thinking it will be a larger issue as time goes on.
Zack

 

[1905Gerrish]

An interesting tangent, which I can move to a separate thread if necessary:





MGC, given that the informative Wooden Canoe Museum in fact exists, and given that it would redundant for the WCHA to duplicate that museum's content, and given that the part of the WCHA website we're now in is solely a discussion forum, do you (or anyone) have any specific ideas or suggestions as to how the WCHA could improve or enhance the detail and structure of our online informational content?

Glenn,
Participation is vital for this forum. If folks don't post, then this forum is dead. I'm curious what percentage of the membership is unaware of its existence? How about an ad campaign in the journal reminding the membership that it is here for a start. Seems rather easy.
Zack

 

[1905Gerrish]

So....a couple things. First, WCHA is no longer the prime resource for information about wooden and wood and canvas canoes manufacturers. That is not a diminishment of the research that Benson conducts and shares here, or the ad hoc contributions other forum participants make. It's an observation based upon fact. The Wooden Canoe Museum is a more structured and complete resource for collectors of old canoes. This site no longer serves that purpose and has not for quite a while. We provide a discussion forum, but not detailed and structured content. The WCHA's solution to this has been to add a link to the Wooden Canoe Museum site.
Next, by virtue of our association with Old Town and the related Old Town research (also no longer easily accessible on this site), the path to WHCA is one that is easily followed by anyone who owns an Old Town canoe with an interest in either dating it or researching it. Benson has always very graciously responded to these inquiries and drawn from his vast resource of Old Town catalogues, the Old Town research and serialization information held by WCHA and beyond that, his own unique and exhaustive work cataloging and researching canoe related information. Given that one of the most common mistakes made is to misidentify all canoes as Old Towns, that results in quite a bit of traffic to this site for both Old Town and other canoes. Given that aside from contacting Old Town directly, there are no other sites offering detailed Old Town canoe dating or construction details, this site naturally receives that traffic and should, in my opinion, graciously respond to it as best possible.
Finally, among us there are many knowledgeable users of modern hulls who have no problem pointing people towards parts, repairs and information about these craft. I once maintained a fleet of Old Town fiberglass and Royalex canoes. I have owned, bought sold, repaired dozens of these. I currently own several modern canoes and I continue to buy, repair and sell them from time to time. I don't hold a great deal of love for these so you won't find me on other sites discussing differential shear or elliptical bottoms, but if you need help to find parts or fix one, I can get you there. I would never consider sending someone to another site to obtain information that I have on hand. I would stop to help you with a flat whatever you happen to be driving except possibly a jacked up Jeep.
Parse it as you may, canoes are canoes. There are (in my world view) no "competitors". Having said that, I have no love for RamX or Grumman.

Mike,
I disagree about the Forums being the prime resource for info about wood and canvas canoes. I certainly don't see it that way. Dan's site is great no doubt. I mean, I just shared some photos with him a month ago or so but, the photos are limited to only decks. That being said, he is only one person if someone reached out with a question. This forum has us for different points, views and perspectives. Never-mind the physical canoes along with tape measures and additional photos.

I really like your suggestion of cataloging ad photos and a tool to organize them by manufacturer. That could be a big help in any restoration.
Zack

 

[Benson Gray]

I would like more members to voice their opinion about this subject

You could write an article for Wooden Canoe and encourage people to contact you and share their opinions. You could setup a survey with something like Surveymonkey.com and see if the organization would be willing to distribute it to their membership email list. You could post your question in the Facebook group known as the Fans of the Wooden Canoe Heritage Association which currently has over 6100 members. You could add a poll question to a new thread here in the forum. I suspect that you would get lots of opinions with any of these options.

A similar question came up in the 1990s when many people were asking if fiberglass strip built canoes should be considered 'wooden canoes' by the WCHA. The board at that time decided that this question would be left to the individual. Their concept was that you could decide if it was a wooden canoe and they weren't going to force the issue. I had recently purchased a fiberglass Breakout design canoe that a friend delivered to me at the Assembly in Keuka. My original plan was to hide this canoe so it would avoid creating any controversy. The board's decision led me to decide that it might be fun to put it out on the green with a printed note in the bottom saying "This canoe has a balsa wood core in the bottom of the hull. Does that make it a wood canoe?" The general consensus from most people who walked by it was "no" but I was not ostracized either, as I had feared.

Participation is vital for this forum. If folks don't post, then this forum is dead. I'm curious what percentage of the membership is unaware of its existence?

I agree that forum participation is key but don't have an easy answer about how to increase it. Some questions about the forum could be another good topic to add to your article/survey/Facebook/forum poll questions.

I really like your suggestion of cataloging ad photos and a tool to organize them by manufacturer.

I think that there is general agreement that this would be a wonderful research tool. It still isn't clear how to best implement it and who is willing to take on a project like this.

Benson

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