Inbetween building and designing kayaks I've also been dabbling with canoes - or 'Canadian canoes' as we always used to call thm. My brother wanted one for use with family on their local reserviors. He was considering buying one in a shop - a shocking decision ;-) Commercial ones are, as with kayaks, generally way heavier than home built, as well as inherently being less personal. So I decided I needed to build him one, quickly. Pic above shows him and his two daughters trying it out.

Since I was short of time I went with a commercial design - the Selway Fisher Prospector. It was OK to build from bought plans, but I'd have preferred to design it myself. I kept the designed hullshape but diverged a bit with some of the details, adding the gunwhales with cut outs as in the pic. These look nicer (to me anyway), allow water to drain very easily when tipping the canoe on its side, provide loads of points to lash down gear and add a lot to the stiffness of the hull - important with 4mm ply.

Since I was short of time I also didn't bother to match up the colours on the outside of the planks well, and was intending to paint the outside, with varnished interior and gunwhales. I ran out of time though and delivered it with a saturation coat of epoxy all over but no varnish or paint. I'd still paint it if it was mine, but I think my brother may varnish the whole thing and enjoy the patchwork quilt effect on the outside.

Why are they all sitting so low down? Cos I ran out of time before building the seats before my delivery deadline (he lives a few hundred miles away and we had a trip planned, so that was when it had to be delivered, ready or not). He can add them easily enough - as well as finishing off some paddles.

Overall a fun build - and I think it'll be a great craft for exploring some of the inland waterways in Scotland, where he lives. I might have to borrow it back at some point for some river trips!