freedom-15

Sunday was sort of a big day for me, as I finally got to take the Freedom off of the strongback.

I’ve almost finished sanding the epoxy on the outside of the hull, which makes me pretty pleased. Before I apply the varnish I will add a bit more epoxy, but I won’t add the final coat until the boat is almost finished.

With the stripping done, the next task was to attach the outside stems. First I trimmed the strips flush with the stem along the leading edge.

With the stems finished I had to touch up the strips prior to the final shaping of the hull. There were two things I wanted to do.

Over a period of a couple of weeks I hit the board hard finished the stripping. Once I rounded the bilge the stripping went pretty fast.

Adding strips to the old canoe is a bit of love and hate. Mostly it’s fun to work and very satisfying to see the shape of the boat come together.

I decided to put some accent strips on the Freedom. For this, I am using a thick band of American walnut with thin strips of Alaskan yellow cedar on either side of the walnut.

With the stems shaped and everything in place, it’s time to start stripping the boat. The Freedom looks like it is quite a straight-forward shape to build and I’ve decided to try out some different techniques for this part of the building process.

Once all the forms were in place the next thing I needed to do was shape the stems. The idea is that the outside of each stem is 1/4" wide and the strips lie flat on the stem as they run out to the forms.

Holy moly batman, I haven’t updated my blog with canoe stuff for a long long time. Where to begin… Well, I should say something about the strongback.