Skinning!

Well the time has come to skin our canoe!  The skin is a heavy nylon.  We put two tables crossways at the stern and bow to give us room to work in the center.  When the center was complete, we pushed the tables into the center so we could work on the ends.  This worked great.  The process we used was:

1. lay the fabric overtop of the canoe.  Wet it very thoroughly with a spray bottle.  Then let it sit for a day or two until most of the wrinkles are gone.
   
2. When time comes to actually skin it, soak it again.  Keep it very wet through the whole process, even up to the part of sewing the stem.
3. Stretch the canvas out on the gunwale of one side.  Don't bother pulling it too tight over the canoe, but make sure it stretched out good fore and aft.  With one person pulling on it, start in the middle, and put some staples (5/16 stainless is what we used) in between the middle ribs.  Space them about an inch apart.  
4. When you have done a row of staples between two ribs, switch sides and do the opposite side.  This time, you can apply a little pressure to pull down, as well as pulling out. 
5. Now move back to the first side, and do another two ribs worth towards the bow.  Again, keep the fabric pulled tight for and aft, and keep it taught downward. 
6. Switch sides and do the opposite side, but applying more pressure downwards and towards the bow.
   
7. Once the entire fabric has been stapled to the gunwale, it's time to stitch the stems.  Basically, starting at where the keelson attaches to the stem, pull the fabric tight making sure it meets in the center.  Using the nylon thread, start stitching.  Move down the stem, gathering all loose material and pulling it tight in a line towards the stem.  Stitch so that the skin remains tight. Keep the stitch in the center of the stem the whole way.  You can stop once you get to the end of the gunwales.  Once the stitch is done, stitch over it again, with short stitches for strength. The process is the same for both sides.
   
   
   
   Next step is cutting the fabric and sewing on the protective strip.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

floorboards

The floor boards need to go in before we attach the seats.  We varethaned them all first, then it was just a (very time consuming) matter of lashing them in place.  My partner did all the hard work for this step.

With the seat supports in place, a coat of varethane was put on the supports.  Typically, we varethane the parts prior to putting them in place to ensure they're waterproof.  Then we do another coat (or two) after the lashing is done.  This secures the lashing and holds the parts together.  

With the supports in place, we lashed the seats on.

So at this point, it's really looking like a canoe!

Now it's time to start thinking about the skin...

Seats

The the thwarts and yokes in place, the next step was to put the webbing on the seats.  This was pretty straight forward.  We bought some webbing from a local reseller Outdoor Innovations.  We measured out where each piece should go, and lightly marked in pencil.

We cut it to length, and used 1/4" stainless staples to hold it in place.  The webbing is 1 1/4".

With the seats made, the next step was to lash a piece on to support it.  We used ash again.  At this point, our lashing method has changed to lashing each intersection independently, rather then running the lashing from intersection to intersection.  It feels like this gives us a better bond.  And if the lashing breaks at one point, it doesn't affect the entire piece.  This is the support that carries all the weight of the seats.  We were  a bit unsure how long to make them, but we figured that spreading the weight over three ribs/stringers should be enough.

Then we sat the seat in place to see how it looked.

We will have to trim the edges of course, but it looks good!

Yokes, thwarts and seats

We started out with a nice chunk of ash.  

We cut it down to size and drew out a very simple pattern.

We jigsawed out the rough shape, and finished it up with some rasping and tons of sanding.  ASH IS HARD.  And heavy.  With the thwarts, seats, and yoke, our featherlight canoe is not so feather light.

We set them aside for a while and started work on the seat.  It's made from the same piece of ash.  We sawed them into 1 1/2", drilled, screwed and varethaned them.  Below we set them in place to get an idea of how they would fit and look.

While we waited for the varethane to dry, we began to fit the thwarts.  We drew the profile of the gunwale on them and cut them down on the band saw.  Then we used the palm sander to make them fit to the camber of the gunwales.  Then we disassembled and varethaned them.  They were then drilled and attached with 1 1/2" stainless screws, predrilling and countersinking each one.  Note that you really have to predrill the ash, as we broke off two screws!  Luckily we were able to unscrew the broken parts.

Varethane

With the inwales attached, the next step was to apply a coat of urethane.  We used the Minwax Helmsman Spar Urethane.  It's designed for marine applications. 

This took considerably longer then we were expecting (about 4 hours for a single coat).  We opted to take our time and put on a thin coat, as we both have an aversion to varnish drips.  We were sure to get all the lashing, underneath the stringers, and pretty much anywhere else.  We started with the frame upside down, worked our way from one end to the other, then flipped the boat and worked back again.

Once the first coat dried, we sanded the inwales.  The outwales were left rough, as they would be covered later on.  It's really difficult to sand everywhere.  The lashing makes this impractical.  With the first coat on dryed, we installed the breast hooks.  We mounted leftover pieces of stringer to the inwale with brass screws.  The screws were predrilled, and we used the below flexshaft on a cordless drill to drive them.

With that done, the breast hooks were sat in place.  Some minor adjustments were made with a rasp to the shape (unlike plywood, the angle of gunwales was not square).  There is a notch cut out near the stem on the front and back to make it easier to drain the boat.  The finished product was ok, but aestically, something about it bugs me.  I think it's that the sharp lines on the edge of the breast hook contrast too much with the rest of the organic lines of the boat.  We may shape this a bit more with our microplanes/dremel.

With the breast hooks done, we decided where the thwarts, yoke, and seats should go.  This was done mostly by looking at pics of other canoes, and actually taking the frame down and sitting in it.  The final layout might yet change.  But before we get to that stuff, we have to install the floor boards.  We gave them a coat of urethane and set them to dry to the right.

Inwale

The next step is to install the inwale.  The inwale give the gunwale a bit more structure.  We cut it to size, then used our microplane to shape the end so it would fit well between the filler and the plywood stem (no pics).

Then we glued the inwale and held it in place with clamps.

Then we used brass canoe nails from the inside.  They were a bit long.  Traditionally the process is called clinching nails.  Basically, the nails are designed to go all the way through, then bend back on themselves creating a staple effect:

https://www.bob-easton.com/blog/2009/534/

With the inwale attached, we trimmed the excess off the ribs.

To smooth out the gunwale, we used a small plane.  There was a little bit of tearout on the far side of some of the ribs, but it was minor.

After the glue dried, we were a little unsure of how well the lashing would hold the entire gunwale on  to the stem, so we decided to put a brass screw in each side.  We carefully drilled a pilot hole, making the port side higher then the stern so our screws didn't collide.  Then very slowly, we put in the screws.  Worked like a charm.

Then we touched it up with an orbital sander.  A few more pics of the final product.

Half Ribs and Filler

While we decided what to do about the filler pieces that were too thick, we went to work on the half ribs and the floor.  The first step was to put the end ribs in.  These start at the stem, and connect to all the stringers and gunwale.  Following the videos, we glued the two ribs in place on the stem.

Once the glue had dried, we drilled and lashed them (insert pic).  

I was skeptical that these short ribs would be able to make such a sever bend without steaming.  In the end, they peeled away from the stem a little, but worked much better than I imaged.  I also considered making a little block to go between the rib and the stem, but once the rib was bent, the angle was very complex so I decided to leave it.

While at the Vancouver Boat Show, I had the chance to take a look at one of the Dream Catcher boats built by Brian Chandler himself.  I was interested in the bow and stern ribs.  He's done them quite differently than in his instructional video as you can see in the pic below.  His are more straight, and ours come up on a curve.  However, I'm sure both styles are fine.

Then it was on to the half ribs.  The point of half ribs is to give the floor a bit more stability.

Here we are with all the half ribs cut and zip tied in place.

We lashed them in place with this new and improved lashing pattern.

T = Top

B = Bottom

L = Left

R = Right

u = Under

o = Over

TL u BL o TL u BR o TL u BR o TR u BR o TL u BL o TR u BL o TR u BR - over to next TL

Now we turn our attention back to the filler bits that sit a bit proud.  We decided that we will belt sand them down until they are flush with the ribs.  In a perfect world, this shouldn't be necessary.  Anyway, at the end of the day, they came out pretty well, and the filler was flush with the ribs.

Filler

So with the stringers all attached to the stems, it is finally time to take the canoe of the strong back, and work on it right way up.

At this point, the ribs are still not attached to the gunwales.

To attach them, we applied glue and staple them.  The staples will eventually be covered by the outwale.  Because there's not a lot of rigidity yet, some of the staples did not go in all the way.  We'll fix that later before we put the outwales on.

With regards to positioning the ribs, we started out measuring on the gunwale, but eventually gave up and just faired them a little bit by eye.  This worked much better.

When all the ribs were attached, the next step was to add the filler pieces in between them.  We started at the end (we haven't determined which is bow and stern yet).  We used the microplane to get the filler to fit into the stems.

We used small spring clamps to hold the filler in place after it was glued.

We continued until all the filler was in.

But when we were done, we noticed a problem.  The filler wood was thicker than the ribs.  This meant that we would have a gap in the gunwale if we left it like this.