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.