Skin-On-Frame Canoe - Part VI

Shrinking the cloth can be really easy or very time consuming. The easy method if you have the room is to soak the cloth right down and then put it in the sun to dry. Must be a warm day. I am not too sure about this method as I have read that it truely doesn't tighten the cloth properly and it can relax again eventually. This place has some great instruction concerning skin shrinking. I used a water bottle and a heat gun for shrinking my skin and it worked out quite well just took some time spraying an area and heating it up. Once you are done all of those wrinkles will come out and the skin will feel like a drum over the frame. Next I put on about 4 coats of varathane on the outside of the skin.

I cut a length of wood for my front thwart and screwed it into place. For my backrest I tried to carve out a curved backrest from some 2x6 but it was full of knots so I couldn't get the smoothness I was looking for. So instead I used some poly batting for stuffing and covered it with some extra skin I had left over.And here we have the finished canoe and all that is left is to throw it in the water and see if keeps me a float.

And it does float. Not only that but it exceeds all of my expectations as they weren't that high. This canoe glides so smoothly thru the water and takes very little effort to get it going. I was really surprised that it even tracked straight without any veering to the left or right. I haven't weighed it yet but it has got to be around the 20 to 25lb area.

Looks like I now need to build a couple more for my boys as I am definitely keeping this one.