Anyone interested in wood and canvas canoes? (pics)

[canoeguy]

I think I told you about the estate sale I went to last week, picking up two 1970's vintage fiberglass racing canoes. Well, I went back the next day when they were anxious to get rid of everything, and bought two more canoes, two vintage Old Town wood and canvas canoes. I contacted Old Town and they e-mailed me the build sheets for the boats, outlining the date built, materials used, and destination. Click on the link to see the boats and read thier history. One is a 16' "Yankee" model built in 1936, the other is a 15' "50 Pound" model built in 1963. Here's the link to pics and history:

http://www.tjadventures.com/canoes.htm

The 16' Yankee has been fibeglassed at some point in it's life, I think I'll fix the fiberglass problems and maybe keep it, maybe sell it. The 15' "50 Pound" will be sold to someone who wants to restore it. Maybe trade it for guns....

 

[MK]

I like that built in backrest.

I don't know if I could use wood boats on the
rivers I usually go to. Well, I could, but the
rocks we sometimes hit would tear em up.
Now that I think about it, I don't think I've
ever used a wood canoe.. All have been glass or
plastic type jobs. We used to rent a lot of Old
Town canoes on the upper Guadalupe river, but
they were all glass/plastic.
We use a orange Coleman canoe quite a bit,
which has been a real good boat over the years,
and a couple of kayaks, one glass, and one
plastic.

 

[cincinnatijim]

Nice canoes. I had almost completed a wood and canvas canoe in the early 60s. A small tornado came along and carried it off. My wife was the first to notice it was missing so we went looking for it. It was across the alley in a neighbor's yard. It had smashed into a cinder block fence, broke in half, and fell into the neighbor's yard where we couldn't see it. After some heming and hawing by the insurance adjuster we got paid for the loss. We decided not to pursue our plans to race from San Marcos, Texas to where ever that race goes along the Gulf. My canoe didn't look near as nice as the ones you bought.

 

[oldRoger]

I spent a lot of time back is the 50's in a 30's era Old town I think 17'. It had been re-canvassed, other than paint on the canvas, & refinishing the wood, it was fairly low maintenance.
Very, Very, low initial stability because of the round cross section, in bad weather we always kneeled on the bottom. If you flipped it which we often did in Lake Michigan, it was very hard to reboard.
The Sawyer X-17 Kevlar that we have now is a lot less "tippy" but not as much fun.

 

[geoff40]

Those are great hulls with many years left in them, with the right TLC given to them. In younger days I spent numerous hours in wood/canvas OT canoes. I love 'em!

 

[E Z MUNNY]

Man, it is really too bad you live so doggone far away because I could really get interested in the '50 pounder' oh well.

Did you ever get the .30-30 brass you wanted? I probably have about 200 new that you could have just for covering the mailing fees.

 

[canoeguy]

EZ Munny,

Dropped you an e-mail about the brass, I could really use the 200 you have....

Thanks,

Canoeguy

 

[longhair]

I built one about 25 years ago. My main concern was weight. I lightened it up considerably so that I could carry it into swamps to fish beaver ponds. Unfortunately, that was its downfall. I lost a lot of structural integrity as a result. However, it did just what I asked and was a wonderful tool. It also looked really good to boot.

 

[ingmansinc]

Very nice. I went to Moosonee, Ontario in a canoe about twenty-seven years ago with a Navy buddy. It was the best canoe, survival camping adventure I ever tackled. We didn't take any food, stove, lantern, etc. We had our canoe, pup tent, hatchet, knives, charts, etc. It was below freezing everyday and we just lived off the land for ten days. This was before they had reality shows and surviorman. I guess we missed our chance to be tv stars.