Wood-and-canvas canoes are the most functional of all the canoes built from wood. Covering a wooden hull, the canvas provides a durable watertight membrane. The covering can easily be renewed and at the same time all other parts can be replaced or repaired, making these exquisite canoes truly an investment for a lifetime of good use.

In this six-day course with Stewart River Boatworks owner/builder Alex Comb, students will learn how to build these traditional craft without relying on the solid form used in commercial canoe-building operations. The method used here involves bending the thin cedar ribs over ribbands connected to station molds and clenching the cedar planking to these ribs with hand-held clenching irons. It’s an ideal method for those wanting to build one or a few wood-and-canvas canoes without having the extensive investment in time and money to build a solid form, and it greatly minimizes the storage space needed to store your form between uses. If desired, the station molds used in this unique method could then be employed to build a solid form for repeated production of the design.

In this course students will build two canoes—a 13′ Soliloquy solo canoe and a 15′ Ami, based on the Chestnut Pal design. One will be covered with traditional canvas and the other with aircraft Dacron. Throughout the week each student will learn a lot about canoe design along with numerous woodworking and canoe construction skills used at Alex’s shop—steam-bending ribs, planking, interior joinerwork, and canvasing. While two lucky individuals will win these boats in the raffle on Saturday afternoon, everyone will walk away with the know-how and gratification of building two beautiful boats. (Link)