Launch day

We took the canoe to the WCHA NW Chapter spring meeting at Lost Lake. Ours was among about 30 wood and canvas canoes. It was so exciting to finally get the canoe in the water after 67 years in a barn, garage or basement. 

Ready to launch

Well, here it is.  Lots of scraping, sanding, steaming and bending, nailing, painting and varnishing.  Made a whole lot of shavings, sawdust, sweat and a bit of blood too.  The first launch in 67 years will be this weekend at the WCHA Northwest Chapter spring meet.

Keel and nameplate installed

Here are the last bits that were added.  The original keel is long gone, but I do have a metal strip that was probably used as a stem band.  It was pretty crude, and not original, so I replaced it with the standard brass half round strips.  The keel is oak with a cove cut into the mating surface, filled with bedding compound to seal the screw penetrations every other rib.

The nameplate was originally black except for the raised lettering, border and embellishments. I tried to restore it to that state, but the raised features are not very prominent, making that task very difficult.  I put a black patina on the whole surface and tried to polish just the raised areas, but ended up with this.