Seats

[Worth Gretter]

I'm restoring a canoe by an unknown builder that seems to be a Maine guide canoe from about 1900. It will not be a completely faithful restoration as the canoe originally had closed gunwales, and I am going with open gunwales. But at some point I need to decide about seats. Earlier "modifications" included heavy duty seats from another canoe, laced with rope, and mounted on scraps of generic lumber. So I have no idea what the original seats were, if any. I would like to make new ones from the same white oak I am using for the gunwales and stems.

It seems all the commercial seats these days are ash and the stock is 3/4 by 1-1/2 inches. You have a choice of factory woven cane, or webbing.

So my questions are:

1) What are other traditional dimensions, other than 3/4 by 1-1/2?

2) Any opinions on options other than cane or webbing, such as babiche, rush, slats, etc?

Any suggestions appreciated!

 

[MGC]

Hello Worth. I'm very keen to find out what sort of canoe you have acquired.
Some older Maine canoes are extremely desirable and sought after. If your canoe is such a boat, it might be one that should be restored rather than rebuilt.
Case in point, there may be fewer than 20 EH Gerrish canoes remaining. Finding a canoe that was built by his hand (he sold the business in the early 1900's) is a wooden canoe hobbyists "Holy Grail". Knowing of one that has been modernized would probably bring some collectors close to tears.
I wonder if you would consider posting some images of your canoe here so that we can help you to identify it (if possible) and possibly offer you advice about restorations vs. reconstruction. Knowing the builder would also help to answer some of your practical questions...Gerrish used cane on his seats, White was using cane, slat seats are common on some Canadian canoes and wartime Old Towns, babiche is very typically Canadian.
If your mission is to end up with a good working canoe (as open rails suggests) we might also help you to locate an alternative canoe to use, presuming yours is one that warrants preservation. I will be selling a Chestnut Prospector within the next months. That is arguably Canada's Maine working canoe equivalent. I also have a 20 foot Guide canoe that was built on the original and historic White forms. Other members (check the classifieds) may also have something for you to consider.
Of course, it's your canoe, so you can/should do as you please with it.
Opinions about seats...yes.
I prefer cane. It is durable, easy to install, very comfortable to sit on and best of all, it is a surface that is easy to shift around on. Sometimes being able to shift your weight on a seat can make the difference between staying dry or taking a bath. Stay away from pressed cane. It is easier to install (arguably) but not as durable as hand woven cane.
Rush is not very common but on the one canoe I own that has it, it seems like a good seat material. The original rush seats on my boat were still in decent shape and they were 125 years old when they were finally replaced. The seats are comfortable. I would use this material if it was original to the canoe (Gerrish...)
Webbing is comfortable and easy to install, but it does not breath through very well. On a hot day you will sweat. The worst thing is that your rear end sticks to it so shifting on the seats requires lifting from it...sometimes when you need to shift the time will not be right to lift...another bath opportunity.
Slats are actually very functional. I had them on a war period Old Town and also currently on a Prospector. There's not a lot of elegance here but they get the job done. Air moves through them and they are easy to shift around on. You may want to put something over them if you plan to spend a long day paddling. Wood slats are stiff.
Babiche seats are fine. I have them on one of my canoes. They are over 60 years old and perfect. The secret to keeping babiche in good condition (as with rawhide snowshoes) is to keep the weaving well varnished and dry. There is a bit of an art to weaving with babiche that I have not mastered. I find it easier to weave a snowshoe with webbing than to do it with hide. I probably worry more than I should about how tight to draw it while lacing. This would not be a choice for a seat material (for me) unless I was restoring a canoe that was originally made with it.
Most of us who restore canoes try to make our own seats to match what was original to the boat. They are not very difficult to make. The wood on the seats is typically the same wood that was used on the thwarts and decks. Birch, maple, chestnut, mahogany was used. Modern seats do tend to be ash.
If originality is not a concern, Essex Industries is a good place to source. The business is one that serves a meaningful purpose and also produces good quality canoe replacement parts for very reasonable prices.

So....I'm still hoping that you can share some pictures. Do you have the Holy Grail? Decks, thwarts, stems, planking patterns, ribs, those can help ID an old canoe.

 

[Murat V]

Also very curious about your desire to go from closed gunnel to open. Can this be done without compromising the integrity of rib tops?

I'm currently working on a closed-gunnel Chestnut Twozer. The top of every rib tapers to a chisel like edge where it is nailed to the inwale. Here's the view from the inside...

On the topside, the rib tops quite thin. Screwing on an outwale through these to make an open system would likely cause the rib tops to split. Not sure if your closed gunnel design is similar or uses pocketed inwales.

Seems that here in Canada at least, babiche/rawhide seats tend to be associated with later year builds, especially with "Huron" boats out of Quebec. Early catalogues also mention cane or slat seats as options.

 

[samb]

Murat - The closed gunnels on my Rushton are not like the Chestnut ones. They are full thickness right to the top then the planking/canvas covered with a thin side rail then a top cover. Converting to open gunnels would have been simple with trimmed planking and rebated outwale.

 

[Benson Gray]

There was a lot of variation in both seats and how the ribs were attached to the gunwales. I agree with MGC that more pictures would be great to help identify Worth Gretter's canoe. The picture at https://forums.wcha.org/attachments/52432/ shows a canoe with ribs shaved on the inside like Murat's Chestnut. The one at https://forums.wcha.org/attachments/52431/ shows a similar one with the ribs shaved on the outside. The one below shows pocketed ribs like a Morris. All three of these canoes are from Old Town.

Benson

 

[Worth Gretter]

I am going to try to post the chain of emails I had with Al Bratton in 2019. He's the one who identified it as a Maine guide canoe but did not have enough detail to pin it on a specific builder. Since then, as I have been working on the canoe, I have a lot more details, which I will put in another reply. In particular, I now know that the lower planks are beveled.


From: Worth Gretter <wgretter@nycap.rr.com>
To: canoeal <canoeal@aol.com>
Sent: Thu, Mar 28, 2019 9:15 pm
Subject: Canoe Identification

Al-

I am a member of WCHA and saw on the masthead of the magazine that you are the contact for the Historian’s Network for canoe identification.

The canoe that I want to identify was supposedly built in 1924 in Sangerville Maine. At least that is what I was told by the previous owner, who bought it at an auction there. It was covered in green fiberglass when I got it, had makeshift repairs, and inappropriate seats.

It is 18 feet long, 13 inches deep amidships, and about 22 inches deep at the ends. The ends have a slight recurve, not much. There is considerable tumblehome, so the beam of 36 inches (about 6 inches below the gunwales) decreases to less 34 inches at the gunwales (not counting the width of the outer gunwale, only measuring to the outside of the planking). There is little or no rocker, and the hull appears to be symmetrical.

The boat is quite light for its size, weighing 75 pounds before I removed the seats and the fiberglass.

The bottom is slightly rounded.

Interestingly, the inner and outer gunwales, and the decks, are all cedar. The decks are very small and plain. They are slightly undercut to provide a better hand hold.

There are five thwarts, all oak, with round center contour and flat ends. One is amidships, two are about 3-1/2 feet fore and aft, and the two at the ends are about 1 foot long (so bigger than carry handles). The inner gunwales have mortises for both ends of all the thwarts.

The inner gunwale is routed out for every rib top. The outer gunnel has a wide rabbet that leaves just a little lip over the top of the last plank. There are evenly spaced nail holes in the inner gunwale which may mean there was a cap, to make a closed gunwale.

The spacing between the ribs is about the same as the rib width at the bottom, but the ribs taper considerably towards the top.

I have removed the fiberglass, seats, and out gunwale, and I have started stripping the varnish off the interior.

If this canoe is historically important, I would consider restoring it faithfully. That would mean scarfing pieces of cedar to repair the breaks in the gunwales, hand-caning some new seats, etc.

However, what I would really prefer to do is: 1) cut some gunwales from a 20 piece of white oak that I have; 2) cover the outside with Dacron; 3) make some oak seat frames with nylon webbing; 4) keep the thwarts; and 5) try to get the completed weight down to 60 pounds.

Please let me know what you think!
Thanks.
-Worth Gretter, Albany NY


From: Canoeal <canoeal@aol.com>
To: wgretter <wgretter@nycap.rr.com>
Sent: Thu, Mar 28, 2019 10:56 pm
Subject: Re: Canoe Identification

Worth,

Here is what I can tell you for sure, and in the next paragraph will be some speculation. This canoe had a serious restore at some point (probably 2). Some of the pieces that you are looking at may not be original. Original to most canoes, and especially to 18" sized canoes the gunnels would Have been spruce not cedar. The thwarts seem to be mortised into the gunnels not bolted under. The planking is narrow, probably of white cedar. Ribs seem to be spaced rather widely apart not the usual 1-2". The decks indeed are small, again, to keep the boat light. There are holes in the inwale and maybe the deck, indicating a rail cap, but not on the outwale indicating a later replacement.

Two questions. Are there any numbers stamped anywhere, or a tag with a number on it? Are the planks square edged, or do they have an angle on the edge?

Now for the speculation...I do not see any seat holes in the gunnels, If seats were hung from the gunnels The bolts may have been L shaped pieces of brass rod threaded on the long end. Barring that, it may have had no seats in its original configuration, sometimes just a rear seat. Since rail caps, L shaped seat bolts, and narrow White Cedar planking are of an older era, I believe this canoe is older than 1924, probably around 1900. Unknown as yet (if ever), by whom it was built. As to it story, I have heard this before many times. What more likely happened, is someone acquired this canoe in the 1924 time frame and fixed and recanvassed it. It was already an older used canoe. Then over time the legend changed to be that this owner built, instead of rebuilt this canoe. it was passed down somehow over time and in the 1960s or 70s the canvass again needed redone and instead, the current owner glassed it, thinking that was a better 'fix'. At auctions, stories make for better sales, so the story stayed. Now, you have it and its fate changes again. I believe this is a Maine built, Maine style guides canoe, by an unknown builder, but near the turn of last century.

As to coverings, glass is the worst, the original style canvas is the best. Dacron is lighter but prone to tearing. Whatever you do make sure you use it. If you can answer those questions we might be nearer to finding the builder. Also, post it on the forums at WCHA.org, and let others try their hand at that one.
Hope that helps.

Al Bratton
610-326-9282


From: Worth Gretter <wgretter@nycap.rr.com>
To: Canoeal <canoeal@aol.com>
Sent: Tue, Apr 23, 2019 1:44 pm
Subject: Re: Canoe Identification

Al-

In answer to your questions: 1) there are no markings that I could find (I looked especially on the stems), and 2) the planks are square edged.

Here are pictures of the seats, the bow seat is a real cob-job. All the hardware used in the old repairs was steel, not even galvanized.

You didn’t comment on the inner gunwale being routed out for every rib top. Is that common?

Thanks.

-Worth

On Apr 23, 2019, at 11:39 PM, Canoeal <canoeal@aol.com> wrote:

Worth,
Routed gunnel was one method used by some builders with closed gunnels. Most did not show at the top of the inwales. Mortised thwarts were also used in older boats. Square edged planking is the most common. The outwales on this canoe were replaced by someone with no clue;I have never seen them bolted like that. The stern seat is a replacement, built way heavier than the original, the cross pieces I see on the bow seat were close to the correct size, if indeed this canoe would have had seats. I would date this canoe to nearer 1900., due to the mortised thwarts and closed gunnels.
-Al

 

[Worth Gretter]

Following up on my previous reply, here are the details I have recorded as I have worked on the canoe.
-Worth

Length: 18' 5” max, 18' just below gunwale

Width: 36” max, 33” just below gunwale; tumblehome continues for most of the length.

Depth: 24-1/2” at ends, 14” midships

Symmetrical; no rocker; shallow arch bottom.

Decks: 11” long, 3” wide; concave on open edge; bottom of open edge rounded as if deck might be used for carry handle; possibly oak.

Thwarts: 1 center, 2 quarter (74” from ends), 2 end (40” from ends); end thwarts missing but remaining 3 thwarts are oak, oval for most of the length, and flat at the end for the 1/4” x 2-1/4” mortise into the inwale.

Seats: unknown due to later replacement. May not have been any.

Stems: oak; extending over first 4 ribs and partially onto 5th rib; 3/4” (actually 0.80”) thick over full length; 7/8” wide tapering to 3/8” at top; contour square at bottom tapering to triangular at top; not visible at top, i.e. ending below decks.

Ribs: 44 in number; width from 2” to 2-1/2”, down to 1-1/2” near the ends of the canoe; spaced 1-3/4” to 2-3/4” apart at the centerline; all rib edges beveled full length; no cant ribs but last 3 at each end made in halves instead of bent; ribs strongly tapered to widths of 1” to 1-1/4” just below inwale; rib ends as thin as 1/8” x 3/4” at attachment to inwale; rib tops curved to match inwale notches; ribs lean towards the middle of the canoe, progressively more toward the ends, with a tilt of 8 degrees at rib 10 (halfway from midship to ends).

Inwales: nail holes remain from original gunwale cap (so originally a closed gunwale canoe); curved notches for every rib end, with the notch starting from nothing at the bottom on the inwale, and reaching 1/8” depth at the top (this tips the rib ends inward at the top for tumblehome while keeping the gunwale horizontal); mortises for thwarts extend all the way through the inwale; tapered alongside decks to about half width at tip of deck; overhanging planking about 1” at ends; wood is light, possibly cedar or spruce; full length pieces, not scarfed.

Outwales: unknown due to later replacement (not sure if cedar or spruce; poorly scarfed).

Planking: width from 2-1/4” to 4”, except that center plank is 7” and full 18' length; planks have beveled edges from the bottom up to the top plank amidships (and any above that at the ends), which have straight edges.

Fasteners: planking attached with clinched copper tacks; rib ends attached to inwale with steel ring nails; ribs attached to stems with various steel nails (tacks, ring nails, finish nails – perhaps not all original).

General: considerable variation in rib width and spacing, and variation in planking width; this seems to indicate a variable lumber supply, or a relaxed non-perfectionist attitude by the builder, or both.

 

[MGC]

Hello Worth,
In your earlier correspondence with Al you note that the planking edges are squared.
In your recent overview of your progress, you mention that the planking edges are beveled.
A reason Al was asking this particular question is beveled planking was not a very common practice. EM White, one of the earliest Old Town builders was known for this practice. EM White was also known stubby little decks as seem to be evident in your canoe.
You note that the canoe tacks are copper. That suggests an early construction. Brass tacks do not appear as early as this canoe was likely built.
Mortised thwarts also suggest a very old construction. This style of build was a transference of birch bark canoe construction methods to more modern boat construction and suggests a build earlier than 1900.
Al is spot on that the boat has been tweaked along the way and also that it appears to be an early Maine canoe. It should have had single piece outside rails extending beyond the stems, possibly cane lashed. It was very likely built without seats.
There are several members of the WCHA who post here from time to time who have the depth of knowledge to properly assess what you have. Rollin Thurlow (Northwoods Canoe) is one such person. Jerry Stelmok (Island Falls Canoe) does not post here but he is considered to be expert on the White canoes. He has the original White forms in his shop.
If I were in your shoes, I would be giving Jerry or Rollin a call to get their thoughts about this canoe.
In my opinion, the canoe is one that should be restored. I would be trying to eliminate all signs of previous repairs and attempt to return it to original condition. Seats probably do not belong in this canoe. Neither do brass tacks. Copper tacks are available. I would lean towards a canvas and would not consider Dacron.
You are working on a very interesting old boat.
Mike

 

[Worth Gretter]

Mike, thanks for your reply.

At the time I corresponded with Al Bratton, there was still fiberglass on the hull, so I had not seen the plank edges up close. So my later info is correct, i.e. the lower planks are all beveled until you get up to the top plank amidships and any planks above that at the ends.

By coincidence, I have already contacted Rollin Thurlow because I found an old email from the previous owners of the canoe, and they had asked Rollin about the canoe at one time. I just sent him all the info I posted above, to see what he thinks.

As for what to do with the canoe going forward: I have already made oak gunwales in a non-original profile, but I can hold off on installing them. I have already replaced all 88 rib ends, but they could be tapered to match the original (very thin) rib ends if I decided to do a faithful restoration. Right now I am steam bending new stems, but they are exact replicas of the originals.

-Worth

 

[Benson Gray]

Beveled planking is a strong indication of this being an early White or having been built by someone who had worked there. This canoe may also have had a "D" shaped rear seat like the other White canoes built before the 1920s. The first link below has some pictures of the rear seat in an early White. Is there any indication that your canoe might have originally had wide stem bands like the other early White canoes? The second link below shows these on another early White canoe if you are not familiar with them. Neither of these canoes have the thwarts mortised into the rails.
Benson

Please help the Penobscot Marine Museum buy a nice old White canoe

Any update on this canoe? Pics? Yes, I stopped by the museum a few years ago and it was on display as shown below. They also had a nice display of model canoes as shown in the last picture. Benson

forums.wcha.org

16' closed gunwale EM White

I christened the White up in the Adirondacks, as it should. Couldn't have been a nicer evening either. Named after Elizabeth, my niece. What a joy to paddle.

forums.wcha.org

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

Any opinions on options other than cane or webbing, such as babiche, rush, slats, etc?

Worth, if you don't have a rare and valuable canoe, and if you don't care about restoring the seats to some original type, and if you are just asking about seat options, then I have opinions based on my 70 years of canoeing in all sorts of canoes.

Cane is very traditional and some think aesthetic, but it sags when wet and inevitably tears with usage.

Webbing is much more comfortable and durable than cane but stays wet longer, and may not look so good on a wood/canvas canoe.

Rawhide can stretch when wet or dry too much and crack unless it is maintained with varnish.

Slats are hard and ugly.

My favorite combination of aesthetics, comfort, durability, ventilation, fast-to-dry, and easy-to-maintain is woven bootlace. I also think it looks nice with a wood/canvas canoe. Nova Craft uses bootlace in many of its canoe seats, as in this Bob Special:

You can buy the seats or just the bootlace here:

Canoe Seats Bootlace | London's Paddle Shop

www.londonspaddleshop.com

Bootlace | London's Paddle Shop

www.londonspaddleshop.com

 

[Michael Grace]

When I saw the photos you posted, Worth, I immediately thought of E.M. White. The shape of the hull and the decks look like White, and the beveling of planking edges is an important indication.

I'm not so sure about the gunwales - wonder if they have been modified at some point. If so, this call might call into question the way the ribs terminate in inwales. First, I've never seen anything like this, but that alone means little. Builders could have tried most anything at some point. More important, the gunwales look like they are made from rough-sawn lumber that wasn't even cleaned up after the build. That's very odd if these are original gunwales from a commercial builder. Finally, the upper surfaces of the inwales and outwales appear not to be coplanar - it appears that they both slope downwards toward their junction. With all of this said I wonder, like Al, if the inwales might be original but the outwales replacements. The holes in the tops of the inwales suggest a cap was once there and instead of a traditional outwale, there may have been a cap on the outside too. This is how early Whites (and other cedar0canvas canoes) were constructed.

Bottom line, from the photos I think the most likely possibility is that the inwales are original, the outwales added later, and originally the canoe was closed gunwale with the existing inwale, and a caps on top and outside. I agree with others that this may be a very interesting canoe and so if it were mine I'd think very carefully about how to reconstruct the gunwales... and seats:

If this were mine, I wouldn't just slap any old thing into seat frames. Webbing and bootlace look horrible to me, and babiche would be just as historically inappropriate for a canoe like this. Yes cane might "inevitably tear" (perhaps in 20 or 50 or 100 years?), but all other options will degrade at some point too. I do hand caning tightly and it doesn't sag. I'll also put in a vote for slat seats (generally, but not for this canoe). My first wooden canoe had seats with pre-woven cane and when that eventually degraded after 25 years of regular use, I flipped the frames and added chamfered-edge slats based upon the beautiful seats in an early Morris I have (Willits seats are also slatted and they also look and feel great). I've paddled using my home-made slatted seats for more than 15 years now and I'm amazed how much I love them. I thought they would be too hard, but they turned out to be very comfortable - much more so than the caned ones. The machine-woven cane had just enough give that the seat frames hurt my rear after some time paddling; the slat ones didn't. I was overjoyed with them the first time I paddled with the new slats.

In any case I wouldn't recommend slat seats (or webbing, babiche, cord, etc.) for your possibly likely historic canoe. If your canoe had seats originally, they probably would have been hand-caned. Some of us have early EM Whites and we could supply you with detailed measurements for construction of replicas if you wish.

Hope this helps,
Michael

 

[MGC]

Worth, Thank you for following up so thoroughly. The pictures tell the story. As you can see, we are generally lining up to confirm that you are working on a nice old White canoe. White's have always had a special place in the state of Maines waterways. More often than not, they were the boat that guides used to ply the big lakes and also the bony fast rivers that Maine is known for. I particularly recall the first time my father drew my attention to one on Moosehead Lake. I think it was in 1967. We were heading up the lake to find our way to Fort Kent. A gray beast of a canoe with a shellacked bottom was drawn up on shore somewhere on Moose Bay. I remember my father fondly explaining that these were the canoes they guided with from Rockwood and the same ones he had used in the Forest Service when he carried supplies to the fire towers. He was clearly a big fan of these. Painted with grey porch paint, I thought it looked like beat up mess. It left an impression. I own the Guy Cyr White my father eventually had built for himself.

From your images it looks like you are clearly capable of restoring that old canoe. What you have already done is far more ambitious than what the average wooden canoe enthusiast will ever take on. You have stripped that fiberglass away, split the hull open to replace the stems, repaired a whole lot of rib tips.. made some inside rails...keep going. Course correct and see if you can put a correct inside rail in rather than the one you have cut. You need to figure out if it ever had seats. Maybe it had one of those cool D shaped seats. It most certainly had rails caps. It probably had copper bang plates. Make sure you talk to Rollin about copper tacks.

Rollin will almost certainly encourage you to keep going.
Good luck and thanks for sharing a very interesting old canoe.
Mike

 

[Worth Gretter]

Glenn, Michael, and Mike, thank you all for the good info and encouragement!

 

[Worth Gretter]

Here is a little more info on the beveled planking. The planking thickness is nominally 3/16 but actually varying from 0.18 to 0.20 inch. The length of the bevel is greater than that, ranging from 0.25 to 0.30 inch. And the bevels are all oriented such that an upper plank overlaps a lower one, i.e. the upper of two planks is undercut to accommodate the bevel of the plank below it.

 

[Worth Gretter]

Mike, I was thinking some more about the whole question of authentic restoration. Many things about my canoe are wonderful, BUT whittling the rib ends down to almost nothing and fastening them with steel nails was not what I consider a good design choice. So at the very least I am going to depart from authenticity there.

 

[MGC]

It's been said. It is your canoe. You can decide how much detail from the original construction should be preserved.
As you make that decision consider that the practice of thinning the ribs to join to the rail was actually a common practice. I see it in several canoes I own and have seen in several I no longer own. My Rushton Indian is made in this way. It's at least a hundred and fifteen years old. My Gerrish is also built this way, and it's probably 125 years old give or take. The 1906 Old Town Double Gunwale I sold several years ago was 100% original ( I was the second owner) and it was also built that way. Everyone who has responded to this thread has one or more old canoes built this way.
I spent my entire career designing and improving designs so I am definitely someone who can relate to the urge to improve things. I made a living at it. When I am working on a 100 plus year old canoe, I suppress that urge by considering one simple thing. That the boats next 100 years will not be as hard on the craft as its first 100 years were. Your old White may return to the water and be used to troll for togue under the shadow of Kineo, but I doubt that you will lay it on it's side on the beach for weeks at a time when you are not using it. I suspect it will get better treatment than that.
I lean towards reconstructing to match what is original, but I will stray with the hardware. I replace steel nails with zinc bronze and steel screws with brass or zinc bronze. And, in the back of my mind I consider what work I am leaving for the next restorer to correct when he or she gets a chance to work on the boat in another one hundred years. The carpenter's rule of thumb that you can hide anything is very applicable to canoes, but I try not to hide things. Frankly, I thinks it's odd that I think that far out but somehow working on a scarce old boat changes your perspective.
If that were a war period sponson Otca I not would think twice about ripping the sponsons off of it, tearing off the keel and lowering the shear....,

I should add....after I stripped the glass off of my Gerrish, I realized that I was definitely capable of doing a respectable job restoring it. It was rough, but it was also just another canoe. What I also realized was that I did not have enough specific knowledge to properly restore a Gerrish. I decided that I needed to let someone with Gerrish experience do that work for me. I got in touch with Rollin and explained that I wanted it to be restored using the original wood, no tweaks, improvements, just back to the original. It was a good decision. I honestly struggled with the idea of having someone else work on one of my canoes but the work he did in his shop was really brilliant. The originality of the restoration is (to me) as important as the gorgeous results his shop achieved. I'm not suggesting you take it to Rollin. I am saying that you will value originality if you pursue it.

 

[Worth Gretter]

Mike, thanks again for your perspective. And I agree 100% about ditching the sponsons!

 

[Worth Gretter]

Here is the reply I received from Rollin Thurlow after I sent him the same info that has been in this thread. I asked if I could post it, and he was fine with that. I just want to say how much I appreciate that he took time to share his advice, given that he has a business to run.

On Jun 23, 2023, at 9:11 PM, <info@wooden-canoes.com> <info@wooden-canoes.com> wrote:

Good Evening,
Well your boat seems to be a assembly of many different manufacturers! I thought it might have been a Morris, a Carleton or a White. But I don’t see enough to be certain of any builder.
The planking on the E.M.White canoes all had beveled edges and the stems were shaped a bit different. The planking edges lapped each other, but I understand that on this canoe only the bottom planking has the edge lapping.
The pockets for the rib tops look almost like a Morris rail that has been cut down but the stems and decks don’t match with a Morris.
So I guess I’m not much help!
It looks like you went to a lot of work doing the rib top repairs. I like how you had the splices on the back side of the rib so less of the splice is visible from inside the canoe. That makes the splice a lot less noticeable. It will be a great canoe for a restoration and you’ll have a lot of discussions on “What is it”!
Rollin

 

[Howie]

Well, I've got some time, so I'll add my 2 cents. I use about 3/4" x 1-1/2" ash, or birch, or mahogany, or oak. And I much prefer hand caned seats, IF they are done the way I like. By that I'm not referring to the weave used, although I do have a preference. No, what I hate is the sloppy way the seats look if no thought is given to the placement of the holes used to thread the cane.

Have a look at the seat in the pic below. Note that all the holes are spaced equally apart. Now look at the cane pattern - especially the diagonally running cane. Note that the weave pattern is nice and regular everywhere except along the edges of the seat. At the edges the weave pattern is an ugly mishmash because the diagonally running cane must twist to find a hole.

This mishmash would be lessened if the holes at the 4 corners were relocated. This is done by sizing the seat differently.

Now have a look at the seat below. No mishmash at the edges - that's because while the majority of the holes are spaced at 20mm apart, the holes at each corner 15mm apart from the two nearest holes (ideally they should be 10mm apart, but this causes problems due to the thickness of the cane).

Oops... my time it up - gotta go! If you'd like more detailed info just ask.