ORCA

CANOE BUILDING WORKSHOPS

IN THE LAKE DISTRICT - POOLEY BRIDGE

This page will give you an idea of what's involved in the building of a canoe on one of our workshops. Our canoes are made from our own designs, the canoes we build are all made from wood, using either 4 or 6mm wbp ply. We have developed our very own clamspstring method on jigs to make the proses quicker and simpler than a traditional stitch and tape build and you end up with nicer looking canoe due to no stitch holes.

NOTE: The following process we use to build the Lakelander. The Pilgrim and Voyager we do not use the stigclam method, just a traditional stitch and tape on one chine line only. Also the order of the build stages may change as we are continuously developing and refining the build proses.

The Vagabond is completely different again. This canoe is built using age methods us used to build a birch bark canoe, the method is very organic as there is no plan or template to speak of and the end canoe can be tailored to the builders needs.

1.

First off we will give you sheets of ply which have been pre cut and ready to assemble. There may be some holes to drill and some finishing cuts to make.

2.

Once all your panels are cut out they then assembled together on our unique jig ready to be clampstrung together. At this point we dont want to give too much away but this method eleminates the need for stitching the planks of the canoe and thus no fiddly wire or cable ties to mess around with.

3.

Now we can put on the gunnels. These give the canoe it strength.

4.

Now the chine lines can be taped using fibreglass tape and epoxy resin. We only glue the inside.

5.

Its now a good idea to fill any gaps (caulking) that can be found in the chine lines, we mix epoxy resin with flour to make a paste, at this point the bow and sterns usually need caulking too, once this is done the whole canoe can be painted with a coat of resin and or painted with your choise of color.

6.

Now all is needed is to fit it out with seats, thwarts, yoke, bow and stern decks, and anything else you can think of, this process can also be done at home, although we have few good ideas for seating as seen in the pictures.