Category: Canoe Restoration

Looking for a New Home

UPDATE Sept 2018 YES, we have a new shop! Moving forward we’ll be running Copper Canyon canoe as a a part time hobby business and will only be working with cedar and canvas canoes. As many of you may know, the the ownership of our much loved work shop recently changed hands and Copper Canyon…


Removing Screws

In my last post Greenwood Canoe Screws I talked about the frustrating task of removing rusted gunnel screws from a Greenwood Canoe. After removing the screws from one side my shoulder was sore, my arm ached and I had numerous minor cuts and abrasions from fighting with Bill’s (&*(^Y*(&y!! screws. I decided to try something…


Greenwood Canoe Screws

Anyone who’s followed my blog or FaceBook page me know the high regard in which I hold Bill Greenwood and Greenwood Watercraft (aka Greenwood Canoe). However, with almost every Greenwood canoe I’ve encountered there comes a day when I use language not appropriate for a public posting. That’s the day when I must remove the…


My Date with a Stripper

I love restoring wood and canvas canoes. However, if there’s one job I don’t enjoy, it’s stripping old paint and varnish. Toxic fumes and chemical burns just aren’t my thing. Unfortunately, in my experience, the nastier the stripper, the better it works. My old standby is methylene chloride based “Circa® 1850 Heavy Body Paint &…


Greenwood Day

One day, early in September, I received, not one but two emails regarding Greenwood Canoes. Being an Ontario refugee (Ottawa and Peterborough), I’d only recently learned about Greenwood Canoes and had yet to work on one, although I had tried to buy one a couple of times. The first of these emails concerned Mike’s Greenwood,…


Steam Bending Gunnels with Plastic Bags

This new steam bending technique is revolutionary! A friend of mine, who’s not even a wood worker, uploaded this video on FaceBook and all I could say was “WOW”. It’s one of those ideas that’s so simple yet so helpful, you have to wonder “why didn’t I think of that”. The video features Shipwright Louis…


Finishing the Faber

With the wood work complete the next step was to fabric cover the hull, seal and fill it. I’ve described this process in my post It’s a Bird, it’s a Plane, NO it’s a CANOE. As this canoe was originally intended for my own use I didn’t want a keel, but rather added a Kevlar®…


New Canoe Shop

With the weather turning and seven canoes, plus a canoe mold on hand, it was time for a bigger shop. Fortunately, through a friend of a friend, I heard about some shared shop space available in Cowichan Bay and went to take a look. In comparison to my current cramped quarters the place seemed huge….


Kevlar® Keel Plate

Historically canoes never had keels. It was only when European boat builders started copying native American boats did keels come into common use. Contrary to popular opinion, the keel adds little or nothing to either the stability or tracking ability of a canoe. Stability is more a function of the bottom shape. A very round…


Fixing the Faber

After dragging the Faber home and getting it up on a set of canoe stands my first step was to remove the outwales and the remaining fabric. Faber used regular (not stainless) staples to attach the fabric under the gunwales and along the stems. Forty plus years later they were a mess. It took me…


It’s a Bird, it’s a Plane, NO it’s a CANOE

My other passion in life is home-built aircraft. I love building, flying and restoring them. One area in particular, that I’ve always enjoyed, is the process of fabric covering. Strangely enough, when they started building aircraft, early in the last century, many of the techniques used were adopted from boat and canoe builders, fabric (canvas)…


Prospecting for Prospectors

If I could only have one canoe, I’d Choose the 15′ Ranger model of the famous Chestnut Prospector. Looking through the ads on Craig’s List one day I found the following: 14′ Cedar Strip Canoe Floats, but needs a bit of minor work, only $200. Comes with 2 paddles. Mike (There were no pictures so…


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