Building the Outer Stems.

Building the outer stems was one of the funnest parts of building the canoe yet because it was one of the first pieces of the canoe that was not repetitive. First, I screwed the stems to the bow and stern of the canoe. However, before these were attached, I had to sand down the edges of the strips to make sure they were flush with the outer stems. Second, I sight lined the flow of the canoe and drew a pencil line of this curvature, making sure that both sides were nearly the same. Then taking the two pieces of white oak downstairs to the work room, I cut the top piece of the stem with the band saw and sanded it down. I tried to make this piece as straight as possible, so it would be flush with the bilge of the canoe. Then, I sanded the edges on the horizontal orbital sander to form more of a blunt point. (If that even makes sense...) Then gluing the piece back onto the canoe, I screwed it back in to ensure that it would join to the cedar. When I eventually sanded the entire hull of the canoe, I sanded down the edges of the outer stems a bit more because of the wood filler, which brings me to the next step. Wood filling...

Removing the Staples

 The next step was to now remove the staples and how glad I was for the Q-Tip idea. As silly as it was, the Q-Tips provided a space big enough for a regular screwdriver. Seeing that I went through the box of 650 Q-Tips and a couple hundred extra from another box and a couple hundred 1/2in. staples from the staple gun, I think I had to pull over 1000 staples from the Canoe frame. Some were harder to pull then others, especially the ones stapled into the white oak stems. Trying not to hurt the canoe when prying the staples out, I placed another screwdriver done to be used as a fulcrum. The next step after pulling the staples was to add the outer stems of the canoe...

Stripping the Canoe Part III

 The last and final step in stripping the canoe was the final strip on the top and the bottom strips at the bow and stern. The bottom strips were glued and stapled just as every other strip was done, but were much shorter. In increments of three strips, as pictured, I wanted to follow a natural curve for the build up to the bow and stern. The strips were cut with a dremmel and the canoe began to look very "canoe-ish." The strip on the top was not whiter western red cedar because the two pieces I was thinking about were not white on the top and bottom, which I did not think was going to look good. Measurements were made to ensure that the top strip fit the curve of the strips at the hull. The two pieces were glued together, cut on the band saw, and then sanded to fit. Unfortunately, the top strip didn't fit as well as I had hoped it would of. The next step was to the laborious process of removing staples.