St Louis mortised seats?

[Dave Wermuth]

I've restored about 15 canoes or so and this is the first time i've encountered mortised joints in the seats. I was excited when I ripped off the old carpet and nails and staples etc and knocked the seats apart to find they are mortised. the bottom of the mortise looks to be chisel cut and not a cleaned up drilled hole.

so, was the mortised St Louis seat common knowledge to all but me?

 

[Walter Hauck]

Dave, The canoes I've looked it that were made before Wickett died had mortised seats. The ones after his death have dowel pins. The new owners doubled production to 300 canoes a year. Wickett's production was about 150 a year. No time for mortising.

 

[Dave Wermuth]

Thanks Walter; I'm going conclude I have a Wickett era canoe. stuff like this makes my day.

 

[Treewater]

How many workers does it take to build 150 canoes per year? How many canoes can one person working alone make in a year?

 

[Benson Gray]

How many workers does it take to build 150 canoes per year? How many canoes can one person working alone make in a year?

There are a lot of variables here depending on the skill and experience of the workers, equipment and materials available, quality and size of the canoe, etc. A person working alone would have a distinct disadvantage since many things like bending ribs for example are much easier with two or more people. The web page at http://montanacabinetandcanoe.com/custom-wood-canoes.html says "Each handcrafted canoe requires approximately 130 hours to complete" and the one at http://www.wcbguild.com/canoeconstruction.html says "The time required to build a canoe varies with the size and the degree of finish and can range from about 80 to 200 hours." I have heard estimates as low as 40 hours but this probably didn't include any of the time required to prepare the wood and other materials. A work year is about 2000 hours so this would be around 20 canoes per person per year if each canoe took roughly 100 hours to complete. Therefore, you would expect a shop that produces 150 canoes per year to have at least eight full time employees. Canoe building is usually a seasonal business so this further complicates things. Let me know if this doesn't answer your question,

Benson

 

[Grandlaker]

Ken Wheaton Here in Grand Lake Stream went crazy one year and built 16 Grand Lakers. And still guided fishing all summer. The only help he had was clinching tack's

 

[Dan Miller]

How many workers does it take to build 150 canoes per year? How many canoes can one person working alone make in a year?

The Rushton factory spat out about 300 Indian Girl canoes in 1910 and 1911 seasonally (December through June) and employed about 8 people during that time.

Factory production will go a whole lot faster than in a single-person artisan shop, as usually tasks are divided up and the worker did one thing (e.g. milling, or planking) continuously. Things happen simultaneously in a factory - e.g. while one crew is planking a hull, a second is ribbing over a different mold while a third is canvassing and a fourth is painting...