Striping done!

Here are a few photos showing the last of the stripping and some details to fitting these.

More work on the Yolk. almost done one side.

stripping done! just a few slivers to fill in any gaps and then sanding!

Planing with a jointer to get a nice flat and smooth bottom. saves  a whole mess of time sanding.

Filling in the football and changes to the plan

The twisting of the strips is over at last. Now I just have to bow them. This takes very little pressure at first. But gets harder the shorter the pieces get. Rather than do just one side of the football and trim it down the centre line, I opted to overlap each side. This is much more time consuming. but I really like the look. Not to mention it is much stronger. I also alternated the light and dark pieces of cedar to accent the method used. Once fiberglassed I think it will look quite good, the contrast.

just starting the light/dark alternations

After block planing the hump, I could see where there were slight gaps under the messy glue.  these would need slivers of wood glued in before final sanding.

The bow and stern overlap of the strips always bugged me a bit. I felt it came to, to fine a point. And it would be a pain to fibreglass such a tight edge. So i decided to cut the front back to the bent cedar strip. Eventually I hope to lay a brass or copper strip down the bow and stern, to protect from bumping rocks and such. But I'm worried about the extra weight that would give. I have to remember I'm trying to make a nice lightweight canoe for ease of transport. I'll have to wait and see, I might have another idea up my sleeve. 

Before 

after

    I use the quick grip clamps to hold the strip tight to the canoe. This allows an easy job to tape, and for the hot glue to set.

Cutting the joint a bit oversize

trimming the bead shape and feeling for final length

Getting over the hump.

This is when everything gets tricky. the joints at the bow and stern start to become more complex, the strips start to twist more, and the concave of the canoe is at it's maximum. Clamping changes almost at every strip. You have to show some creativity in getting a tight joint between strips. Especially the outside of the canoe. The inside is usually a tight joint being the inside of the curve/tighter radius. But the outside can be trouble. glueing only a 2-3 foot section at a time makes this much easier. gives you the time to be creative with tape and hot glue. Or even surgical tubing if required. If struggling too much one could router the cove more to one side to help with this. I just kept on as it seemed to work for me the way it was going.

The 'football' taking shape

getting over the hump

nice tight joints on the inside.

     Between waiting for glue to set, i'd started to work on the Yolk. I'd looked forward to hand carving this. I borrowed a broken Yolk my father in law had salvaged from a wrecked canoe. This one served as my template. it looked to be hand carved as well. Wasn't symmetrical enough to have been machine made. I laminated the stock up using my salvaged piece of oak. laminating it wold give it extra strength over a single piece. But I didn't want to glue too many pieces together or it would start to look a bit like it had been repaired or something. I used a jig saw to cut it into it's rough shape. 1/8th larger than my finish size

I then roughly sketched out the inside and outside shape. Then out came the carving gouges and i set to removing to bulk of the material. With good sharp gouges, this is easy a quick. the hardest part is marking what material to remove. having a template is the way to go. trying to do it from memory or just guessing will get you in trouble fast.