Building my own Kevlar - Carbon canoe

The Project Wrap up

Canoe project forum

Running total of cost

Canoe Project Home - The Strongback - The Form - The Mold (part 1) - The Mold (part 2)
The Layup (part1) - The Layup (part 2) - The Layup (part 3) - Project Finish (gunwales) - Project Finish (floats) - Project Finish (seats)

Click on images below for high resolution images

07-21-2006 -I somehow lost all my late 2006 early 2007 picture of the project. It was completed for the most part in the fall of 2006, however some work was still done it 2007. Most of the following pictures are retakes in 2009. I will have to estimate the time of year for the rest of the journey.

Fall 2006 - I wanted to have 3 seats so the so the whole family could be in the canoe. Here is a broad view of an installed seat. The book suggested to attach lawnchare web seats with bolts and washers through the hull.
While this would have been lighter I did not like the look and had some concerns about the stress on the mount point of the hull when I put my full weight in the seat. As you can see I went with cane seats and decided to mount the seats to the gunwales.

Here is a close-up of a seat mount. The bracket are ash (like the cane seats and gunwales). I wish I had not lost the original pictures. I bought some threaded rod (at Home Depot) along with 1/4" jam nuts and coupling nuts. I used lock-tight to attach the jam nut (not sure why they are labeled as such) to the threaded rod to make long bolts which I could use to hang the seats. In this picture you can see the coupling nuts used to hold up the seat. I wanted to be able to remove a seat if the need arose.

I filled the seat mounting wholes with sawdust mixed with epoxy.

I also filled in the gaps where the layup did not touch the gunwales with the same sawdust / epoxy mixture. This would not have been necessary had I had a flat layup in the first place. I caused some more issue with this step.

This is a poor picture, it is here to show the mess I created inside the boat when I used my dremmel tool to sand the not quite cured sawdust / epoxy mix on the gunwales.

I had a tree branch fall on the canoe over the winter and had to make a patch on one of the foam ribs.

You may have noticed that the inside of the canoe was blue. This is the color I wanted the boat. When I ordered the second epoxy hardener I wanted to cover some of the exterior mistakes with color. I wanted blue and was assured that I received blue coloring from Raka.com It looked like green to be but having never used epoxy I thought maybe there was a chemical reaction with the color like that of epoxy and hardener. As you can see my blue boat is green.

I applied three coats of the the green epoxy to the outside of the hull followed by three coats of Z-Spar FlagshipVarnish for UV protection. I made an error here as well (more on that later).

Here is a side view of my "blue" canoe. The fact that the inside is blue and outside is green works ok since blue favorite color of one of my boys and green the other.

I had a problem with bubbles of epoxy on the outside hull due to wrong mixture ratio. I should not have switched the type of epoxy when I ran out of the quick and hard Raka hardener. I went with their non-blushing to finish the boat which I mixed incorrectly at first thus it never set. I had to clean it up and put on a few coats with the correct mixture. It does not bother me since the boat is not a work of art. It has some hard use and withstands said use.

I wanted to name the canoe "Hope She Floats" or "Ugly Boat". As usually happens dad got overruled so the boat is named "The JuddBuilt" (our surname being Judd). I lost the Photoshop file of the name decal so this site only shows a picture of it on the hull. I printed it on a laser transparency with my color laser printer and applied it with epoxy.

The boat floats and can displace a fair amount of water. This is where I would have put the picture of the entire family in the boat had it not been lost. We had it loaded with two adults, two children, and two large dogs (full grown yellow lab and golden retriever). We will have to get another picture taken sometime.

(picture lost)

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