Anyone incorporate an adjustable foot brace into a solo build? I'm starting a Merlin and thought it would be nice to built in some sort of adjustable foot brace.

Ideas are welcome!

Hopefully Alan Gage will be along shortly ! He has put foot braces in about all of his canoes. They were light, and efficient.

Jim

quote Cloznuff: "Anyone incorporate an adjustable foot brace into a solo build? I'm starting a Merlin and thought it would be nice to built in some sort of adjustable foot brace.

Foot braces, IMO, are darn near a necessity so they go in every one of the boats I build for myself and usually get added to any boat I buy if I plan on keeping it.

Lots of different ways to do it depending on how adjustable you want it to be, how much extra weight you can live with, and how much aluminum vs. wood you can tolerate.

For me I have no problem looking at aluminum (either shiny or painted black) and am happy to take the weight savings. Simplest setup is aluminum angle riveted to the hull and pre-drilled for different foot brace positions. The aluminum foot bar is telescopic and you use a wing nut and thumb screw to hold it in place. It can be adjusted on the water but kind of a PITA. But if you don't have a sliding seat there's not much call for moving it so doesn't work too bad. Lightweight and simple.

Another variation is to cut slots into those pieces of aluminum angle and use a spring loaded foot bar where the spring tension locks it in place. Still easy and lightweight but much easier to adjust on the fly as there are no fiddly little nuts and bolts fumble with.

Or instead of aluminum angle you can cut a piece of cedar, or whatever other wood species you'd like, and glue it to the hull for the bracket. Looks nicer but it's heavier and takes more work to properly shape the piece to the hull. Plenty strong but not very reversible if you should decide you want to remove or change it. You'll still need a telescoping foot brace, which probably means aluminum.

Or instead of attaching a long bracket to the hull you can epoxy two small wooden blocks, one at the front of travel and the other at the rear. The bracket of your choosing will then be attached to these. Careful measuring and placement will keep the left and right brackets parallel to each other so that the foot brace doesn't need to be telescopic.

Those are just the ways I've done it. There are many modifications that can be done to each style. I also like a sliding seat so some of mine have the seat and foot brace attached so that they're adjusted together, which means once it's set for your leg length it never has to be adjusted again. Just slide the seat to adjust trim and the foot brace moves with it. Seats and foot braces are fun problems to solve.

You can find pictures and descriptions of some of my braces at these links. Scroll down and you'll find them somewhere on the page.

Spring loaded

Parallel bars

Wood brackets

Alan

I like the spring loaded bracket Alan. That's a nice concept. The photos really help with visualizing. I might consider that in the future if I do a build.

Agreed that a brace is something I want in all my boats,

Thanks Alan! Great ideas. My main question, which I didn't even really ask I guess, is if any provisions are made before the glassing is done. Looks like you do everything after the glassing.

Is there any reason the aluminum brackets couldn't be epoxied in...if one chose to?

quote Cloznuff: "Thanks Alan! Great ideas. My main question, which I didn't even really ask I guess, is if any provisions are made before the glassing is done. Looks like you do everything after the glassing.

Correct. I don't do anything different to prepare for it. Just make sure the area is scuff sanded before attaching with epoxy.

Is there any reason the aluminum brackets couldn't be epoxied in...if one chose to?"

Should work fine but I don't like the idea myself. If the idea doesn't pan out or if the aluminum should be damaged I want a way of easily removing the bracket for repair, replacement, or re-engineering. That's not going to happen without a lot of work if epoxied in place. With rivets it takes less than a minute to remove and all you're left with is two small holes on each side. Once filled they're nearly invisible. If you don't like the looks of shiny aluminum rivets on your hull you can use black ones or paint them any color you like. A lot of people seem to have a phobia about drilling holes in the hull for things like rivets but I've never quite understood why.

Alan

Thanks again to everyone for all the input on this question and many others that I asked along the way!

She's "Done" with the footbrace installed. I ended up buying a Wenonah adjustable one as there is an outfitter 5 minutes from my place that had one that I got a deal on. The wood mount rails added a little weight but I just couldn't get myself to drill holes thru the hull.

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THAT is a pretty boat!