One side almost finished

The current weather supports my project, as it is either raining or snowing, so it is nice to stay in a warm workshop.

Yesterday I have visited a professional boatbuilder, Mr. Anže Logar, he also built a couple of canoes, but he mostly builds much bigger boats. He finished a professional boatbuilders school in Norway (if I remember correctly), and he really helped me with his advice and even offered to show me how to work with epoxi when the time comes-Thank you Anže!!!

He has one canoe hull, waiting for completion, and it is beautiful! You can check his work on www.lakercraft.com.He gave me some invaluable advice for choosing the right epoxi and fiberglass fabric, and it was also motivational to see a finished hull, so I stayed in the shop until the morning hours and almost completed planking on one side of the hull. It is really hard to describe the feeling of building it, but the hours just fly by in the workshop!

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Almost finished!

This monday, the canoe was finnaly finished, well almost, as I still have some polishing of the decks to do, but I will wait a couple more days to do that, so that the clearcoat has time to cure properly. It has been a lot of working hours since November (I stopped writing down the hours soon after the start as it demotivated me:)), so it was pretty fast and steady progress. Now I have to wait a couple of days for nice weather and then we go canoeing!!! But, I am already thinking about my next project-a wood strip sea kayak.
I sure learned a lot during the course of this canoe build, and also my father in law, who is an expert woodworker, admitted to learning a lot of new things, so it was very revarding experience for both of us. The feeling of accomplishment is amazing, and I really look forward to all the hours that will be spent on the water with the family.

And to think how it all started: I brought home a couple of sitka spruce boards:)

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