I designed this 12 ft pack canoe, 28" beam, ~12" freeboard, 35lbs. It takes approximately ~15 hours to build (not including shopping runs and waiting for liquids to dry/cure). 3mm Okoume marine plywood, with 6oz fiberglass cloth on exterior, Douglas fir gunwales and interior floor covered with 6oz fiberglass to increase strength and rigidity.

Yes, one could spend double or triple the time making the end product more refined/more beautiful woodwork, etc., but the goal of this build was to get on the water before the water got too cold/hard (ice) to test a new design :-) -- functional, but not a lot of attention to detail.

This manufacturing process was inspired by the Gorewood canoes by Flo-Mo (https://flo-mo.weebly.com/gorewood-14..., but this canoe is a ground up original solo hull design with some alterations from the original Gorewood designs and manufacturing process. Were things learned? Sure they were (the design had too aggressive a water entry/cheeks (trying to get a Hornbeck classic look/feel), the strategy for the bow and stern wood cuts should be modified for exploiting plywood grain/favored bend direction, you can goop on thickened epoxy in the moment, but once it is in place, it is a pain to get rid of, so, better to take care while it is workable).


Music Credit:

Drone in D by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...

Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-...

Artist: http://incompetech.com/