HOWB 021 – Wooden Boat Dan on building the Sassafras wooden canoe - 02.09.12

In today’s episode I talk about the Sassafras 12ʹ Canoe project I am working on. I'm building it using plans from the book “The Canoe Shop” by Chris Kulczycki. 

The first thing I did when I purchased the book was to cut the binding off with my band saw, then have Office Depot spiral bind the book (cost $4.00) so I could lay it open on my work bench. 

A couple other things I did a little differently:

I placed the panel layout closer together on the plywood so I can build the boat out of 3 sheets of Okoume instead of 4. To do this, I entered all the diagrammed panel offsets into an Excel table, then used Excel’s fraction capability to deduct from each of the offsets to arrive at offsets that would place the panels closer together on the plywood. If you want help doing this in Excel, just let me know – it’s pretty slick.

I am building the canoe using the Table of Offsets.

I used Chinese knockoff BS1088 plywood at 1/2 the cost of certified BS1088. The jury is still out on this cheaper stuff – the plys are not equal thickness and there are a few stains and surface imperfections. I also increased the scarf to 1 1/2ʺ (4mm ply).I am tracking all my time and costs for the project – this is a first for me!!!

You can contact me at [email protected] to share you comments, feedback, stories, and wooden boat adventures.

Keep the bright side up and the barnacled side down - Wooden Boat Dan over and out :D

PS  Please note this podcast was recorded several years ago - some of the links, email addresses, phone numbers, and promos mentioned are outdated and no longer valid.