Students Vanessa Moore Operations Research & Financial Engineering, 2020 Jasper Arnold Physics, 2020 Phillip Frost Politics, 2020 Nick Bauer Politics, 2020 Project Description The purpose of the CANOER group was…
Vanessa Moore
Operations Research & Financial Engineering, 2020
Jasper Arnold
Physics, 2020
Phillip Frost
Politics, 2020
Nick Bauer
Politics, 2020
Project Description
The purpose of the CANOER group was to design and build a 14-foot cedar stripwood canoe. The members of our group were inspired to build a canoe from our shared love of the outdoors and our experiences canoeing on Lake Carnegie off of Princeton campus. Two team members were also inspired by friends who attend other universities who have designed and built their own stripwood canoes. The main features of our project consisted of three key steps. The first step was the development of the frame that served as a mold for the cedar strips to be wrapped around. This included the strongback, stations, and stems. The second step was wrapping our frame with the cedar wood strips and stapling and gluing them to our mold. The final step of our project was coating the canoe in fiberglass and epoxy for waterproofing and to hold our finished product together. While these steps were the broad tasks to be completed, many menial steps throughout the process contributed largely to producing the best possible finished product. Some of these smaller steps included accurately cutting roughly 150 strips of cedar to fit our ¼” wide specifications, stapling and wood gluing these strips together, removing the staples and filling the holes with a cedar powder and silica paste, and finally sanding down the canoe before fiberglassing.
Stripwood canoes are typically designed and manufactured using one of two general templates, flat-bottom or round-bottom finishes. Each template has its own advantages, and the first step in designing a canoe is deciding what kind of experience you are building for. Flat-bottomed canoes are deemed as the more stable of the two designs and are preferable for novice users. Round-bottomed canoes, on the other hand, are built for speed and provide “secondary stability,” a boat’s ability to keep itself upright when tipped at large angles (Gilpatrick 13). Stability is an important factor for recreational canoes, but the ideal leisure boat has a favorable combination of capacity, maneuverability, and stability. The round-bottom option is more likely to provide this combination. One popular design for what is considered the most stable round-bottom canoe is called the “Puddle Duck.” It is small enough to be easily moved around, and narrow enough to gather some speed, but it also has a large enough capacity to fit two people. The specific dimensions of this canoe are 14 feet long by 34 ½ inches wide by 12 inches deep, with an approximate dry weight of 45 pounds.
While the Puddle Duck design is not intended for harsher water, additional elements can be added to provide greater support if necessary, such as the addition of a keel or extra strips of wood (called “ribs”) centered on the bottom of the boat. The final step in the fabrication process, after the canoe’s hull has been constructed, is the most important for the boat’s seaworthiness. This step involves epoxying a sheet of fiberglass such that it soaks into the wood, which affects the final product in a few ways. First, it gives the outside a sleek, dynamic finish to maximize maneuverability and speed. Second, it ensures that the boat is waterproof, which increases stability while further ensuring maneuverability. Finally, it locks out all moisture from the wood, optimizing the canoe’s longevity.
Gilpatrick, Gil. Building a Strip Canoe. Fox Chapel Pub. Co., 2010.
When building our canoe, we followed step-by-step instructions from Gil Gilpatrick’s book Building a Strip Canoe. To begin, we chose a canoe shape and size, 14 feet long by 34 ½ inches wide by 12 inches deep, and adapted the given measurements to fit our chosen dimensions. Our first task was to produce the “stations” and the “stems,” which form the shape of the canoe. We traced the seven station and two stem patterns, given to us with the purchase of the book, onto plywood boards. The patterns provided were the outlines of one half of the symmetrical, mushroom-shaped stations along with the two stem shapes. For the stations, we first traced the half onto one side of the plywood, drilled holes in the wood at the ends of the center line, and then traced the other half of the pattern on the back side. Using a band saw, we carefully cut out the seven stations and two stems. Our next task was to assemble the strongback. The strongback is the base of the frame around which the canoe is built. It resembles the shape of a ladder. We used two 2”x6”x12’ planks to form the outsides of the ladder, and then used the miter saw and hand saw to cut the supportive horizontal and diagonal pieces. The horizontal pieces establish the width of the strongback, and the eventual canoe, which is 18”, and are drilled 20” apart so that when attached, the seven stations will be evenly spaced. The diagonal pieces are simply reinforcements for the strongback. Lastly, we drilled the seven stations and two stems to the strongback to complete the frame. The stations are 18” apart and the two stems attach to the last station on either end to create the shape of the bow and the stern.
After completing the frame, our next task was to prepare our frame and cedar wood for the attaching of the strips. We sanded the edges of our stations and stems and coated them with masking tape to prevent the strips from being glued to our frame. To prepare our wood, we cut our ten 12’ by 6” by ½” cedar planks into approximately 150 ¼” wide strips. When attaching the strips, we built the canoe upside down. The frame was built such that the top of the frame would be the bottom of the canoe. We attached a strip of scrap wood along the centerline of the frame as a guideline. We then attached the strips along the sides of the frame, starting with the first strips touching the bottom of the curved part of the stations, just before the right angle on each side of the station. Since the longest cedar planks available for purchase are 12 feet long, the book instructed to attach an additional strip of the necessary length to form the full length of the canoe. We glued and stapled additional 2 foot long strips to reach the desired 14 foot length. Using wood glue and a staple gun we continued to attach the wood strips, first gluing them to each other, stapling them to the stations, screwing them into the stems on each end, and then using clamps to hold them in place. At each end, we had to saw the ends so that they would fit snugly together. Transitioning from placing the strips vertically to placing them horizontally was the trickiest part. We worked slowly trying to minimize the gaps and applied lots of pressure to manipulate the wood. Toward the end of the curve, we continued to add strips but in shorter segments so that we were able to bend them more easily and could prevent gaps. We continued adding segments, wedging the ends into each other to form a tight fit. After attaching all the strips and allowing the glue to dry, we removed all the staples and screws and coated the canoe, filling in any gaps with a paste of silica filler, cedar flour, epoxy, and epoxy hardener. After waiting 24 hours for the paste to dry, we sanded the canoe with a belt sander and 80 grit sandpaper. After sanding, we fiberglassed the boat. First we lay down the sheet, cutting it to fit the outside of the canoe. Next, we coated it with epoxy and epoxy hardener, sinking the fiberglass cloth into the boat. After the first layer was applied, we waited 3 hours before completing a second layer and then waited another 2 hours before the final layer. Once this side had dried, we removed the canoe from the frame and sanded and glassed the inside.
