1947 Old Town 16' C&S grade HW canoe

[frank_a]

All clamped up and ready to start restoration. Got some new stuff today too, and some extra ribs a buddy brought over yesterday. Doing good, but not sure how much I'll be getting done the next couple weeks, got other stuff going on.

Frank

 

[Greg Nolan]

Frank

I was surprised to see a can of contact cement in your last pictures. Is that what you used for your dowel joinery? I would think it not the best kind of glue to use for the joinery common in canoe building/repair/restoration.

Usually the "Weldwood" that folks here refer to for canoe and boat work is Weldwood Plastic Resin Glue, a much different kind of adhesive -- a pre-catalyzed urea-formaldehyde powder that is mixed with water to make a very strong, water-resistant bond. Contact cements are not usually used -- indeed, the Weldwood technical bulletin site
( http://www.dap.com/docs/tech/00030503.pdf ) says that their contact cement "Should not be used for structural applications . . .." My experience with contact cement has been for its more common purpose -- bonding sheet laminates such as Formica to plywood for counter-tops and shelving.

I would think that stem repair and any scarf joints that you might be undertaking should be considered structural, and I would be leery of using contact cement for that kind of work.

 

[frank_a]

Thanks for the insight Greg. I just ordered some Weldwood Plastic Resin Glue from Amazon. It will be here Thursday, and we leave Friday for Ocean City for a week, which will give me time to catch up on my reading!

Good thing you caught this, as I was going to start some repairs tonight, starting with gluing and clamping some minor cracks!

Frank

 

[frank_a]

I returned the Elmers stuff, didn't find much to recommend it online. Got some JB Weld Wood Weld instead. I've used JB Weld on a lot of metal stuff, but wood epoxy was not on my radar screen, at least till now. I've sure liked their metal stuff, we'll see how this goes. Also ordered an unfinished white oak stair tread (1" X 11 1/2" X 48") from Home Depot that I hope to use for new decks and stem scarfs. It's rib tops and stems first, then figure out what to do with (or how to do) 3 ribs that really should be replaced. Then inwale scarfs. they're spruce and should not be too hard to source. Rib blanks I can get from Island Falls Canoe up in Maine.

This is all going to wait at least a week. We have a condo on the boardwalk in Ocean city MD, and will be gone tomorrow morning through the following Friday. Water based recreation, but the floating on your back kind...

Frank