Thanks Ray that was fun, Tom

Ray, I have finally completed the 24″, 36″, and 54: canoes…  I put them together for the picture..  It has been a fun time…  Thanks for your support…  Someday I may take on the 72″ canoe to add to my fleet.. John

I have designed a new stitch & glue canoe kit. There are many new and very interesting things about this one. First of all it all cut on the new CNC. There are 5 panels for each side assembled and stitched with copper wire over a set of Luan forms. It goes together easily and fast. About four or five hours and it will be taking shape. Then glue all the seams on the inside. This time i used my regular Titebond wood glue thickened with wood flour. This worked excellent! Strong, sands easy and the color is perfect. Once that dried overnight, I cleaned up the outside and pulled the copper stitches out, the epoxy and cloth the whole outside, though this could be skipped. I finished it out with heavier pine gunwales,seats and thwarts. The deck is cut on the router as well. The canoe was a lot of fun to build. Minimal sanding. I will be selling the completed lights as well as the kit. This is brand new so I have not started a new page for it. If you’re interested, drop me a line and I will set you up. Very pleased with how it came out. Used 1/8″ mahogany plywood. There will be a new page just for this kit. Comments can be left here.

Tom Frost of Lilburn, Georgia sent in a picture of his finished 36. Excellent job. He says now his son is building one from the left over strong back. We’ll look forward to the pictures of that one Tom. Tom said in his email: I love the kit!

Tom Finewood  from NY sent in a photo of his 96″ that he is building from our kit. Coming out great!

William Lusby from Ottawa, Ontario finished his 36 epoxy canoe with red cedar ribbing.Painting it with some designs on the front. Nice Job Will!

My trusty homebuilt CNC has been great and still works very well, but there were limitations. I had thought of building a new one, but the parts alone would cost a couple thousand. I had been looking around for a long time for a used one, but choices were very limited and or far away. I found this Chinese made CNC which is one of the Ebay CNC’s that you can get from China. Very heavy and quite well built. Doesn’t appear to have been to much. Had to do some work on it. It used the same software Mach 3 which i was familiar with, and the components are all available right on Ebay. it is 4 times larger than the one i built. it is capable of cutting a 4′ x 8′ sheet rather than the 24″ x 43″ of my home built. I am very pleased with it and got it for an okay price. All of my parts should be a little cleaner edges and cuts. I will post more on the DIY CNC page.

Recently built this 96″ Canoe Chandelier for a Dave Eaton in Eagle River, Alaska. He wanted the option of lots of light but loved the ability to dim the lights to soft glow. So I made one with the larger 7″ diameter or square lights and put 5 of them in place instead of the usual 4. Very pleased with this light. Went UPS Ground in the plywood box and made it to the town north of Anchorage in about 5 days in one piece!