Cliff and PJ are regulars on the Oz Woodwork Forum – they recently decided … with one week to go … to build a Quick Canoe for the Tinaroo Raid, a yearly wooden boat festival held in Far North Queensland.
PJ is in Tasmania which is pretty cold this time of year, so travelling to the tropics has its attractions.
The Plan – Build a Canoe for the Boatshow in one Wek
Our plan is to build the Quick Canoe in the week before the 2010 Tinaroo Raid & take it to the raid…. PJ has taken over the plans & has drawn up a schedule….
To be able to use it on the weekend, we have to have the last coat of paint on by Wednesday night.
We started just before lunch Saturday 5/6/10.
The shed was NOT ready but it does now have power. (after 5 years of waiting)
We have altered the plans & build sequence slightly.
We want to have a bright finish inside & a painted exterior.
I have some Altex epoxy timber preservative that I want to try so there will be 3 coats of that on the inside with a UV resistant finish over it.
PJ bought the paint & varnish & it is in the shed so I’ll get the details later.So far, besides the wood preserver, the other things we did different were to cut 2 sheets at once & we glued & screwed the stem doubler in before we put the epoxy fillets in.
The photos above are for a day and a half.
The first one with PJ doing the marking out was taken at 11.57 Saturday morning.
The last one was taken at 7.13pm Sunday night just before the lights went out.
Day 3…. Started at 7:30am & finished at 8:30pm and we are behind schedule. Pics above.
I didn’t mention that we are using rough sawn timber so we are having to dress it as we go.
I am dipping into a stack of hoop pine that was cut about 18 months ago & at the time it was cut I was planning to build a PDRacer not a canoe.
I still have heaps left for the PDR but the log that we cut up was 16′ long but only clear for 11′ so we are having problems with a knot.
We have broken 2 pieces & had to back track & prepare another piece.
One of them was a gunwale just as it was going on, the other was the keel so we modified the plans a bit & made the deadwood bigger & scarfed the keel into it.
There is an ambiguity in the plans for the keel.
The material list says it is 19 x 38 (¾” x 1½”) but the notes say that it is 19 x 19 (¾” x ¾”)We have gone with the 19 x 19 ‘cos I would have had to open a different pack of timber to get a 19 x 39.
We (I) also wanted a stronger floor so we have made a couple of ‘floor mats’ out of 2mm ply & glued them down with epoxy & held them in place with SS screws through the bottom into the keel. You can see them in pictures 66 & 76 below.
PJ wants to make a feature by drilling a heap of various size holes in the pointy bits & cover them with dacron but we are probley going to run out of time to do that.
There are NEVER enough clamps…. see picture 64. (or you can use drywall/plasterboard screws – MIK)
We could only glue one in-wale at a time so that was a holdup to.
The stress at the pointy bits is fairly significant &, if you are trying to rush the job, the gunwales can let go.
OK, the pics, including a few arty ones for art’s sake.
Ahead of Schedule – so add some details to the canoe.
Then the chaps got into some nice detailing as they found themselves ahead of schedule again. Neat termination of the inwales and gunwales.
The end decks were fitted nicely recessed and painted black – looks VERY Cool.
Day 5 saw LOTS of sanding & the clamps removed.
The boat was finished & just waiting for paint & varnish by 1:46pm on day 5.
The inside has tinned epoxy timber preservative & varnish on it, the outside has paving paint on it. The decks will be done in black enamel.
The thwart is a piece of Huon that PJ bought up from Tassie.
Pic 139 shows one of the knots that didn’t break, they are very pretty, just weak & a pain to work with.
Finally the boat was ready to put on the car on Thursday.
Canoe Launching at the Tinarro Boat Show
Finally Launching day at Tinaroo. Cliff sounds pleased!
We won!
Launched my QC Saturday morning at the Tinaroo Raid & then won the popular vote prize on Sunday morning.
I’ll have a heap more pics from the Raid to post in a new thread later, about 250 photos to sort through.
There was a very nice Goat Island Skiff there as well so I took some pictures of it too.
Quick Canoe with Goat
Boat is used for utilitarian gathering of firewood
Now let’s see if I can get the flickr slideshow to work …
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More information about the plan here
Simple and cheap plywood canoe plan – Quick Canoe