Glued-Strip Canoe

Larry Westlake WESTLAKE BOATS

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1987 glued-strip canoe – scantlings & construction notes.
1987 Unsheathed Stripper in 1992

I don't recommend doing it exactly the way we did it. But here is how we did it...

We used molds for David Hazen's smaller "Micmac" model, right out of his book "Stripper's Guide". I shortened the boat to 12 feet by altering the station spacing proportionately. Note that those patterns are not fair! That was corrected after mold setup by using sighting battens, glued-on shims for low spots, and removal of high spots.
A glue-laminated ¾ x 1 Dfir inner stem was used, with a ¾ glue-laminated mahogany outer applied later. Dfir outer keel 1x¾ pent section. No keelson.
We used square-edged 3/16" thick strips (no beading). Where section curvature would produce an unacceptable joint gap, edges were bevelled by hand. Any gap less than a 32^nd will be invisible among the woodgrain, but the UF glue will fill up to 1/8^th. Hand bevelling is easy to do accurately enough, wastes far less wood & time than beading, is clean, quiet, and enjoyable. "See-through-crax" that some strippists complain about with Sq-edge strips is not a problem when using UF, since it is densely opaque. Nuttin to fear but fear itself. Widths of planks varied – ¾ around bilge, increasing to up to 1-1/2 in flat areas.
Stapled the strips in place. We started with a level strip, then worked up and down from there. This approach forces excessive edge-set into the bottom "football" strips, and I now think that horizontal strips in the topsides look gross. Starting at the sheer and working toward the keel is better in every way except one – all strips must be narrow enough to bend, so you can't use wide ones to quickly fill easy areas. Okay, two: if your sheer line is not sweet, paralleling it with the strips will make that painfully and permanently obvious.
Mix the UF glue powder thick enough so it won't sag out of the joints and don't smeerp it around. It's easy to clean up if its in nice squeeze-out beads, not if its a surface glaze. Using a squeeze-bottle to apply it is easiest, but only mix enough for two strips at a time or it'll kick off. If possible, come back to the seams after a few hours, when the glue has gelled to leather-stiff but is not yet glass-hard (as it will be next day). At this gel stage you can just scrape it off perfectly cleanly. If you leave it to sand later, expecially where it has glazed the surface, it is much more work.
Once all the strips are laid up and the glue has cured, hot-swab all the staple-holes, smooth the hull outside, remove the molds, and smooth and finish-sand the hull inside – inside must be in ready-to-varnish state, since you can't sand it after the ribs go in.
Ribs are 3 inches apart, ¼ x ¾ red cedar, edges chamfered. Were I to do it again, I would use something stronger, though not a single one has broken.
We boiled the ribs in a gutter pipe with the end folded over, then hammered flat and rolled and hammered again, so it finishes up like an old-style toothpaste or ointment tube. Doesn't leak a drop if done carefully. The bottom end of the tube sat on a camp stove burner. It was secured so it could not spill - that much boiling water can be deadly. Boiling is way faster than steaming. The main problem was over-cooking the next rib while getting the current one into the boat.
My memory fails me here, but I think we quickly pre-bent and over-bent the hot ribs over our knees by eye, and then kind of rolled them out to lay firmly to the bilges and tumblehome. We clamped them at the rails, and popped in a light crossbar sprung to hold the ribs against the sides, with pads on the ends. Having ten hands was – well, handy. The number of clamps was a big problem but I can't remember how we solved that. We might have made wooden clamps, we might have stapled the ribs in a few places.
Once the ribs were dry, we took them out, sanded the raised grain, and glued them back in place with UF after masking their runs, stapling them till the glue dried. The staple-wounds on the inside of ribs won't clean up or swell out the way those on the outside of the hull will, and are the ugliest item on the boat. This system does not allow the planking to move against the rib as the girth expands & contracts with moisture, so eventually caused some of the ribs to pop locally – very slightly - from the planking, or, if this didn't occur, some of the plank to split (not usually at the seams, but in the middle). It is the greatest fault with what we did – because of the negative cosmetic legacy of the staples, and the inflexible connection to the planking. A better system would be to clench the ribs with canoe tacks so they could adjust themselves to suit expansion stresses, instead of gluing them. It would look far better and take less time, too, since you could clench while hot and have no clean-up to do.
Two half-ribs were used on the bottom between ribs. One would have been enough, maybe saved a half-pound and lots of work.
Inwale was very slim – 3/4 deep x 3/8 thick Dfir. Outwale 3/4 deep x 5/8 thick Dfir, screwed from inside thru in'l, plank, & ribheads.
Seat frames were 3/4 x 1¼ Dfir on edge, seat fabric was laced over them, not through holes so as not to weaken. Screwed atop riser instead of hung from inwales.
A 5/8 x 3/4 continuous seat riser about 6 ft long was used, fastened thru the plank & ribs from outside. This was dumb – we probably gained two unnecessary pounds with this. Should have used short cleat risers – or a thicker inwale to hang the seats from as usual – or flat hanger straps instead of hanger bolts through the inwale. I hate to tell you, but the risers were cut from a chunk of nice alder that was exactly the size needed. Alder is prone to rot. Well, 25 years later I am still worrying – is it going to rot before I do, or not? So far, not, and the suspense is killing me.
Slim natural-crook italian plum breasthooks (instead of decks) ¾ thick.
Thwarts were local sour cherry (weighs less than ash, is nearly as strong, very supple). Main one was ¾ thick at centre thinning to ½ at ends, 2½ wide in centre narrowing/necking markedly near ends, arched about ¼ inch. Others varied in proportion to length.
#6 screws were used along the rail and riser, at breasthooks, and for outer stems & keel. #8 were used in the seats & at thwarts. All other joints glued.
The only finish was urethane varnish.
No metal band on stems or keel – too heavy! Too expensive!
"We" in this account refers to myself, another dad, and our three kids who all built this canoe together. For the most part we worked with hand tools only. It took 3 months of Sunday afternoons working as a group, with some other days and evenings where I sawed wood or sanded alone. Ripping planking and ribs etc. was demonstrated, and the two older boys did some ripping, but most of the components had been sawn by me in advance so that our work together was quiet, companionable and pleasant. We certainly could not have built a snot-stripper this cheap, this fun, or with this little exposure to toxins and irritants. I think time was about the same as a conventional glassed stripper, weight too, but this boat is much more fragile.

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