Wooden Kayak and Canoe Projects: Northwoods Canoe Company

Plywood and cedar strip canoe plans, books and videos, and hard to find materials.

January 5th , 2010

What projects would you like to see going on? Bending on ribs?, other steam bending projects?, canvassing?, any aspects of restoration?, etc. Contact us and we'll see what we can come up with.

Another New Year passes here at the Northwoods Canoe Company. We would like to thank all of our customers and patrons. With out you, Rollin and I would be out of a job. There seems to be a never ending suppy of wood and canvas canoes built by various companies in many different places coming in from all different locations. Most of these have withstood the test of time. Most of these canoes have been used and stored long enough to still be intact enough for restoration, some better than others. It never ceases to amaze me how rough a condition a canoe or boat can come in and still be repairable. A new canoe, while it is more practical and cost effective, doesn't have the sentimental value that is refered to by our customers when they bring in their boat. They will however, eventually aquire it.

We have a steady stream of these canoes as well as a fair number of new canoes and boats to be built in the near future. We at The Northwoods Canoe Company intend to continue to repair and build canoes and boats to the high standards that you have come to expect and appreciate. Again we thank you for your business and entrusting us with your families memories.

As noted below we have added a webcam and a web blog. We hope you check them out often and enjoy seeing whats going on in the shop any day. Feel free to log in a comment on the blog, that is what it is for.

So with that, here's what has been going on in the shop. The holidaze have passed and we get back to the daily routine of warming the shop every morning and working on the tasks at hand. Garrett Conover is spending a few weeks working in the shop making planking and ribs for up coming projects. We have started to accumulate canvassed and filled canoes in the paint room. Several of the most recent restoration projects have reached the point of drying. There are a few others in the process of repair and will soon be joining the rest as they are canvassed and filled. One is a Shell Lake Co. boat called "the Mallard King". I just brought in an old 17' Carleton numbered around 9300. Rolllin has been working on a guides canoe built in Greenville called a Sawyer Canoe. It is vary much like a E.M.White 18 " Guide model, beveled planking and all. We've had a couple different students in the shop. The last two classes have been students from the midwest. The first was Chris, an Episcopalian Priest, and the second was Keith and his son Josh, who are patrons of Chris's congregation. We have another scheduled for this month a young lady from Pa. is building a 13' American Beauty. Bean has been Bean she has discovered the heat of the woodstove and enjoys the snow. Our lunch time walk has become a ski and she enjoys the woods in the snow but misses her daily swims.

What's happening in the shop at this very moment. Check it out, and tell us what you think. Click on canoecam and have a look. You can also check in with our blog and make snyde remarks at canoecamblog

Students in the shop

Here Chris and Rollin work on the rails of Chris's Cheemaun

Finished Chris with a smile taking his boat out for the trip home.

Keith, on the left and his son Josh built a 14' E.M. White.

Now drying in the paint room with the others

This is the Shell Lake duck boat "The Mallard King".

It spent considerable time in the stripper and had an intricate brace and support system.

We spent a large amount of time repairing rib tops, replacing inwales and stems. There were a few ribs to be replaced, the deck and coaming supports all needed to be remade and replaced.

New stems, rails and ribs done, planking was the next challenge.

Even stripped the remaining wood was not clean enough for varnish and it is a working duckboat so the inside is painted duck boat brown sort of a dull olive drab color. Here you can see the amount of planking replaced.

This one's definately seen better days. This picture does no justice to the extent of damage this canoe has. Here it is stripped and ready for repair.

New rails was first after some ribtop repair. You can see here that some dummy ribs were installed so there was something to attach the rail to, so many ribs to replace. Decks and several series of rib replacement plus new stems brought this boat a long way.

Here's the Carleton at first glance she looks pretty good. It was repaired somewhere along the way. The tips of the ribs and decks were glued up pretty well. After some arm twisting, Rollin convinced me to take it apart and the more I did, the more apparent it became that it was the right thing to do. The tips of the decks, rails and stems were begining to rot, and the proper route was replacement.