Scraping, Planing, Sanding

Now that the canoes have complete hulls, the next step is fairing. This is a process of scraping, planing and sanding all the little ridges and bumps out of the strips to give us a nice smooth surface for the fiberglass to stick to.

The simple tools I use for this process are simple indeed. A paint scraper takes all of the glue drips off and some of the real rough edges. One side of the scraper is sharpened flat and the other side is sharpened with a convex curve to fit inside the hull. A low angle block plane is then used at an angle across the strips to level them and give us a nice smooth surface. This will take care of the majority of problems and makes a lot of cedar curls.

And then its time for the random orbital sander, starting with 60-80 grit paper to finish grinding smooth an then a final sanding with 120 grit to remove the last of the scratches.

This is also the best part of the building process to really get a chance to know the canoe, because it is a canoe now, no longer a pile of strips or empty forms. With each wisk, wisk, wisk of the plane you are in constant contact with the boat. You feel for ridges, check for smooth. Your fingers explore all of the joints, what your eyes can't see, your fingers will expose. As you smooth and shape you get a feeling for what the final hardware and rigging should look like, what materials should be used... call me crazy but it talks to you, tells you who it is and what it wants to be...