Shell Lake Deluxe

[martin ferwerda]

I have come into ownership of a Shell Lake canoe, it has the floor and the impressively large bilge stringers, so it is the deluxe model, it is 17 feet long. From what I read on the internet there are some records that might have been scanned for Shell Lake. This canoe only has 2 numbers, a 16 on the inside stem, there are no holes in the stem indicating that there might have been a brass plate at one time, so it looks like it originally only had the 16 for numbers. Any thoughts on dating this canoe ?

 

[Dan Miller]

Washburn County Historical Museum has the Shell Lake records: https://www.washburncounty.org/listing/washburn-county-historical-museum/389/

 

[Benson Gray]

Shell Lake assigned a different series of serial numbers for each model based on a limited set of records that have been photographed. The oldest one appears to be 1166 1 from March, 1940 and 1188 31 from August, 1954 may be the newest. My guess is that this canoe may be from before or after those dates. The link below has some more details. Please reply here if you are able to get any more information. Thanks,

Benson

Shell Lake Boat Company | Wooden Canoe Museum

woodencanoemuseum.org