I generally post my canoe building adventures on the builder’s forum but its sort of like the Quetico Afficianodos forum. Dying. I’ve posted some pretty complete lengthy posts on building wood canoes over there.
Anyway. I have a Cedar Merlin I built in 1996. It’s been pretty much everywhere and has probably well over thousand rough miles on it. I rode it hard and it has treated me well. We have a relationship with each other.
It weighs 36 pounds and is full-length white cedar. Rare and stunning wood. I trimmed it in cherry and the gunwales are mahogany.

I’ve pretty much wrecked the bottom to the point where I am stripping the fiberglass off the football on the bottom and replacing it with new glass and epoxy. Here’s where I am so far.














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I am using a router with a small 1/8” straight bit to score the glass in order to pull it off without pulling off glass I want to keep. The marker is my line.
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I’m using a heat gun to soften the epoxy and the glass pulls right up. You can see how fugly the bottom is.

This is where I am today. I’ll get the rest off tomorrow and prep it for new glass next week. More to follow.

Tom

I think this is one of the cool things about wood strip boats. Repairs are interesting, but doable. I like the router for getting precise depth of cut for removing glass.

Thanks for sharing this process Tom, as those of us who use the snot out of our strip boats need to be prepared to repair them in this fashion. I did a portion of my hull two years ago and am very interested in your process. Kind of off topic, how did you keep the weight of your canoe so light? Weight of fiberglass? Thickness of strips? Coats of resin? My boat is also a 16 foot Merlin and weighs in at a tad under #50. Good for you to have built such a feather weight, I'm jealous and want my next build to be just as light. Much appreciated.

Sweet!

Really cool Tom!

MacCamper: "how did you keep the weight of your canoe so light? Weight of fiberglass? Thickness of strips? Coats of resin? My boat is also a 16 foot Merlin and weighs in at a tad under #50. Good for you to have built such a feather weight, I'm jealous and want my next build to be just as light. Much appreciated."

A few things I did to get it as light as possible.

1. I used white cedar instead of the customary Western RC.
White cedar is 25% lighter in weight.
2. I used 5 oz. Glass on the outside w/ three coats of epoxy. I used 3.75 oz. Glass on the inside with only one coat of epoxy.
3. The outwales are very thin. The inwales are 3/4” wide at the center but taper to less than 1/2” at the ends. And the decks are itty bitty.
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I finished pulling off the fiberglass on the bottom. It’s all off but it still looks rough. If I try to get all the residual epoxy off down to bare wood, I’ll spend forever and I don’t know if I even could. White cedar is sooo soft and the epoxy is sooo hard that I can’t really sand them so close to each other without taking off more cedar.

Since this canoe is already 27 years old, and I own the canoe, I’m just going to leave it and either tint the last layer of epoxy or go with an ugly graphite bottom. Either way, I am super happy to put more years into this canoe. We’re going on a few trips this spring.

Thanks for the tips Tom.

It’s a beautiful canoe, even more so because it’s been used so much. Wishing you many more paddling journeys with this special boat! Thanks for sharing the pictures.

Each crack tells a story Tom, and it appears there are several in that hull, what did you do in the field to continue your adventures? I've made my wilderness repairs with duck tape, and then a process similar to yours on a smaller area when I got my boat back home.

You'll do fine. Good progress so far.

MacCamper: "Each crack tells a story Tom, and it appears there are several in that hull, what did you do in the field to continue your adventures? I've made my wilderness repairs with duck tape, and then a process similar to yours on a smaller area when I got my boat back home."

Hey Mac- I never did any field repairs on this canoe. I just finished the trip and assessed the issue when I got back. I usually just filled in the crack with some quick cure epoxy to limp it along for another trip. The wood is black in the deep scratches due to water staining.

I used to carry a piece of fiberglass and some quick cure epoxy on my trips. One time up in Woodland Caribou we cracked the bottom of a canoe and used the glass/epoxy along with the heat from a Coleman stove to apply the repair and cure the epoxy. Worked like a charm.

Now I carry some quality gaffers tape wrapped around a pencil just in case…

Tom

I finished getting all the glass off the bottom.
I used some scraps of 6oz. Glass and have three coats of epoxy on the bottom. It turned out better than I though so thankfully, I didn’t have to add graphite to the last coat to hide the blemishes.

All those deep scratches are still there but I don’t care a bit. The bottom is essentially brand new so I’m ready to go.

All I need to do is some fairing of the epoxy/glass where it meets the old glass then strip off the old varnish and re-varnish. Almost done and I’m super happy to give my canoe another 20 years of paddling.

Sweet job Tom. Thanks for sharing.