Shell Lake serial #?

Howie

Wooden Canoe Maniac
I'm restoring a 16' Shell Lake.
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There's a tag on the front stem that reads:
1166
100

Thanks to the Wooden Canoe Museum I know that 1166 identifies the canoe as their Deluxe Guide. But what does the '100' signify? Serial #100?
 
From an earlier related post...Dan Miller wrote;
"The Shell Lake serial number is a pair of numbers each 3 or 4 digits long. The first number is the model number, the second apparently sequential. For example, 116 123 would be model 116 - the 16' Deluxe. The number will be found stamped in the wood or on a brass tag. The Washburn County Historical Society Museum has the serial number records for Shell Lake canoes."

Search Shell Lake here and you'll find this topic has come up fairly often.
I think there was also mention of Shell Lake records in an article in the Wooden Canoe.

Mike
 
Sorry... That was lazy of me - shoulda found that on my own. Thanks Mike.
 
Actually, it's a good thing to rehash some of these things from time to time. There are certainly folks using this site who might be interested in this information who weren't around to follow the older discussions. Your post puts shell lake front and center again. A quick visit to Dan's Wooden Canoe Museum site highlights that there's more to the hobby than just Old Town, Huron and Morris
 
But what does the '100' signify? Serial #100?

Yes, this canoe is serial number 100 as Mike indicated. The bad news is that the known records for that model stop at serial number 56 in 1947. This canoe is probably newer than that. The link below provides more information about a similar canoe. Good luck with the restoration,

Benson


 
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Benson,
I totally forgot that you had access to those ledgers. Were the second and third ones also made available?
 
I don't know Benson... I wrote to the Washburn County Historical Museum and got an almost immediate reply with a pic of a from their book. I see serial #s (I presume) from 97 to 106 - and there are more just out of view. Of course I don't see anywhere where it explicitly says model 1166 or Deluxe Guide, so perhaps you're right (as usual).
IMG_0001 (3).jpg
 
My guess is that this page is for the model 116 since it follows the page with that on the top (and the serial numbers are sequential). There is nothing written on the top of this page. Both pages are attached below.

Benson



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Perfect Benson! The right hand page in your 1st pic clearly says Deluxe Canoe with 116 written in ink, and lists canoes with serial #s 57 to 85 on line entries 1 to 29 (line entry 30 is blank). Then on to left of the page shown on your 2nd pic you can see the 116 bleeding through the other side of the page, and serial numbers resuming at 86 to 114. So indeed, the canoe I've got was completed on 7/15/1944.

Don't I wish a similar book would turn up for Rushton!

As an aside, I wonder what ever happened to the canoe with serial #89!
 
You never know! And can you believe I wasted my once-in-two-months access to the site on that?
 
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