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Making Seats  (April 2001)

Sitka Spruce frame pieces for the bow seat (the ruler next to it is 18 inches long).

 

 

The stern seat frame.

  

tenon seat.JPG (26385 bytes)

Carving and cutting out mortise and tenon joints.

 

 

seat glued.JPG (51441 bytes)

Industrial Formulations G2 epoxy was used to glue the frames together.

 sanding seat holes.JPG (32738 bytes) 

Sanding cane holes before varnishing (stern seat).

 

seats.jpg (68378 bytes)The varnished and caned seats.  Next time use more care and petroleum jelly at earlier stages of caning to minimise fraying.

 

Postscript (Oct. 2004):

The seats were removed after the first season. I was playing at Palmer Rapids one day and tore the bow seat out during a spill. It turned out not to be such a bad thing because I wanted to raise the seat height and move the bow seat closer to the centre for solo tripping, and to remove the stern seat completely because I rarely used the canoe for tandem paddling and wanted to minimise weight.

Seat crack top.JPG (56852 bytes)Seat crack bottom.JPG (39705 bytes)

The bow (or solo) seat cracked during the mishap so it was epoxied. 

Seat reinforcement.JPG (51194 bytes) A groove was also cut out of the bottom and a maple support piece was screwed and epoxied underneath because simply epoxying the crack would not be sufficient to hold my weight. The repaired seat has held up fine.

Solo seat mount.JPG (54576 bytes)Seat mount close-up.JPG (30533 bytes)The mounts for the seat were made stronger by cutting mortise  and tenon joints between seat and cleat and the cleats were made larger. The old seats were simply epoxied to the top of smaller cleats.  

A small Sitka Spruce thwart, wrapped in fibreglass, was installed halfway between the centre yoke and decks to improve rigidity after removing the stern seat.  Gunwhale crack filled.JPG (46601 bytes)Gunwhale crack at thwart.JPG (28684 bytes)One gunwhale began to crack at this joint, as seen on the left. I excavated the crack and filled it with sawdust thickened epoxy:

In the canoe's third season I did more tandem tripping and did not like the idea of sitting on a pack so I decided to install small cleats for a removable stern seat. I wanted small cleats that would not add too much weight but provide sufficient strength to hold my weight. stern seat cleat close.JPG (47090 bytes)Cleats - removable stern seat.JPG (46241 bytes)And I wanted it removable to minimise wieght portage weight when solo tripping. cleats in the hope that there would still be enough surface area to make a strong and lasting bond. The cleats are installed but as of this writing this new setup has not been tested on the water. Stay tuned ...