Not sure of this is in the correct place, feel free to move.
Graba cup of tea this may take a while. This will be my second post, hit the wrong key half way through the first version and deleted the lot .
So ..a little introduction first ..used to paddle ks in my mad youth mainly throwing myself down the biggest waterfall I could get to. After a few close calls and a lung full of Lakelands finest spring water I hung up the paddle and spent my time high up the Lake District on the tops of fells (usually in winter) in my tent.
I then found BCUK last year, got introduced to hammocks and now spend my nights out lower down in the hills in amongst the trees. There are fewer out of the way places once you get lower down and noticing that many decent spots were reachable by canoe I thought it about time I rekindled my interest but this time in something I can carry my kit in.
After fainting at the price of new and second hand canoes I read some good reviews on SOTP about a bloke called Stu and his Apaches. ( I have no connection with Stu etc etc).
So after a lot of reading and even more emails from Stu (for a one man band, he goes out of his way to help) I spent my pennies on a shiny black Apache hull and associated bits of wood.
Now why black you ask? Well apart form being the fastest!! I wanted something that would hide away whilst camping and always wanting to be a bit different, didn't want to be another green canoe owner (sorry greenies ).
So a few weeks ago I popped down to Apache's production facilities headquarters (Stu's shed) and collected along with some valuable advice a couple of paddle blanks and a new shiny Apache.
I wanted slots along the gunwhales, to drain water after the inevitable dunking , to tie things to and I think they look good. So I made myself a jig to hold the router. Given another boat to build I'd make the jig a bit deeper as the router popped out once but thankfully on the very end of the gunwhales which is now hidden by the decks.
Pop the router in to the jig, wiggle about a bit and hey presto...
You get a nice line of these....
I left a larger space between the slots at the centre of the canoe to allow for the yoke and at the ends to allow for the decks.
By this time, feeling quite smug with my efforts I got careless, joyfully wiggling the router thinking this is going quite well and taking far too much wood out with each wiggle I snapped the router bit.
So off to the local shop.....didn't have any......off for a 30 mile round trip to Focus and returned with a slightly larger bit (only one they had) so I had too go over every single hole again so they matched. I was more careful this time !!
I used the same jig to round off the slots then adapted it so that I could pre-drill the screw holes before fitting to the canoe.
Once both sides were done, out with the angle drinder to take off the surplus edges (goggles and mask essential, the fumes and dust are terrible).
I clamped the inner gunwhales in place, wedged the deck in and drew a line along the centre of the deck over the gunwhales, this gave me a line to cut the gunwhales along.
I'm not normally this good with wood joints...
Clamped inner and outers on to the canoe and using my homemade gunwhales alignment tool (patent pending)(piece of wood with a slot cut in it) I drilled through the canoe using my pre-drilled holes as a guide.
As I had measured my slots from the centre of each strip of wood I decided to start at the centre and work outwards, leaving the ends free to allow the decks to be screwed in.
All this took about three days (kids to look after in between, meals to cook). I think I could have got this far with a solid days work but I spent a lot of time just looking before committing any cuts to the wood etc. The last day ended after dark with this view of the Langdale Pikes from the garden.
Fitted the yoke and handles quite quickly.
Then I found my first deliberate mistake !!! I didn't measure the seats as I thought if they ended up under one of the slots I could just move them forward or back slightly until they wern't under a slot! Oops!
After looking at new wooden brackets, metal brackets, some aluminium strips and a whole day of thinking I eventually decided to shorten the seats by an inch or two so they didn't overlap any of the slots. I'm quite small and will only have to carry small bottomed poeple!
So the seats were in, lots of sanding followed by more sanding, then some sanding and finished off with a bit of sanding. Then some oiling, more oiling and a bit more oiling.
Like a kid at Christmas I set off yesterday with my new black Apache for Coniston (Windermere although closer is too busy and I didn't fancy an audience for my first wobbly outing).
The rain stopped just long enough for a 2 hour paddle.
Can't beat an Apache, steamer and the Old Man in the background !!
Anyway, I would highly recommend building your own and would recommend Stu and his Apache's. For a novice in a canoe it handled very well, turned quickly and didn't tip me out !!!
Hope you enjoyed. Now some camping is needed.
Graba cup of tea this may take a while. This will be my second post, hit the wrong key half way through the first version and deleted the lot .
So ..a little introduction first ..used to paddle ks in my mad youth mainly throwing myself down the biggest waterfall I could get to. After a few close calls and a lung full of Lakelands finest spring water I hung up the paddle and spent my time high up the Lake District on the tops of fells (usually in winter) in my tent.
I then found BCUK last year, got introduced to hammocks and now spend my nights out lower down in the hills in amongst the trees. There are fewer out of the way places once you get lower down and noticing that many decent spots were reachable by canoe I thought it about time I rekindled my interest but this time in something I can carry my kit in.
After fainting at the price of new and second hand canoes I read some good reviews on SOTP about a bloke called Stu and his Apaches. ( I have no connection with Stu etc etc).
So after a lot of reading and even more emails from Stu (for a one man band, he goes out of his way to help) I spent my pennies on a shiny black Apache hull and associated bits of wood.
Now why black you ask? Well apart form being the fastest!! I wanted something that would hide away whilst camping and always wanting to be a bit different, didn't want to be another green canoe owner (sorry greenies ).
So a few weeks ago I popped down to Apache's production facilities headquarters (Stu's shed) and collected along with some valuable advice a couple of paddle blanks and a new shiny Apache.
I wanted slots along the gunwhales, to drain water after the inevitable dunking , to tie things to and I think they look good. So I made myself a jig to hold the router. Given another boat to build I'd make the jig a bit deeper as the router popped out once but thankfully on the very end of the gunwhales which is now hidden by the decks.
Pop the router in to the jig, wiggle about a bit and hey presto...
You get a nice line of these....
I left a larger space between the slots at the centre of the canoe to allow for the yoke and at the ends to allow for the decks.
By this time, feeling quite smug with my efforts I got careless, joyfully wiggling the router thinking this is going quite well and taking far too much wood out with each wiggle I snapped the router bit.
So off to the local shop.....didn't have any......off for a 30 mile round trip to Focus and returned with a slightly larger bit (only one they had) so I had too go over every single hole again so they matched. I was more careful this time !!
I used the same jig to round off the slots then adapted it so that I could pre-drill the screw holes before fitting to the canoe.
Once both sides were done, out with the angle drinder to take off the surplus edges (goggles and mask essential, the fumes and dust are terrible).
I clamped the inner gunwhales in place, wedged the deck in and drew a line along the centre of the deck over the gunwhales, this gave me a line to cut the gunwhales along.
I'm not normally this good with wood joints...
Clamped inner and outers on to the canoe and using my homemade gunwhales alignment tool (patent pending)(piece of wood with a slot cut in it) I drilled through the canoe using my pre-drilled holes as a guide.
As I had measured my slots from the centre of each strip of wood I decided to start at the centre and work outwards, leaving the ends free to allow the decks to be screwed in.
All this took about three days (kids to look after in between, meals to cook). I think I could have got this far with a solid days work but I spent a lot of time just looking before committing any cuts to the wood etc. The last day ended after dark with this view of the Langdale Pikes from the garden.
Fitted the yoke and handles quite quickly.
Then I found my first deliberate mistake !!! I didn't measure the seats as I thought if they ended up under one of the slots I could just move them forward or back slightly until they wern't under a slot! Oops!
After looking at new wooden brackets, metal brackets, some aluminium strips and a whole day of thinking I eventually decided to shorten the seats by an inch or two so they didn't overlap any of the slots. I'm quite small and will only have to carry small bottomed poeple!
So the seats were in, lots of sanding followed by more sanding, then some sanding and finished off with a bit of sanding. Then some oiling, more oiling and a bit more oiling.
Like a kid at Christmas I set off yesterday with my new black Apache for Coniston (Windermere although closer is too busy and I didn't fancy an audience for my first wobbly outing).
The rain stopped just long enough for a 2 hour paddle.
Can't beat an Apache, steamer and the Old Man in the background !!
Anyway, I would highly recommend building your own and would recommend Stu and his Apache's. For a novice in a canoe it handled very well, turned quickly and didn't tip me out !!!
Hope you enjoyed. Now some camping is needed.
