Steve Warren
Steve Warren built this pair of solo canoes: a Wee Lassie and a Wee Lassie II. From Steve Warren:
As I was constructing the canoes and prior to sealing with epoxy I began to have second thoughts on the wood selection. All the strips looked yellow to white and appeared rather flat. I had not used an accent strip and was worried about how distinctive the canoes would be when finished. Needless to say, when the sealer coat of epoxy was applied ALL of those concerns left me and I knew that Poplar was right. I had tried to bookmatch strip for strip during construction and ended up with nice accents port to starboard. Tulip Poplar, when finished, has variations in color ranging from pale yellow to an olive drab tone to white and can have mineral deposits which are purplish to black. The pictures that I sent you don’t really demonstrate this effect but what you see on one side of the canoe is almost the same on the other side board for board. Of course there is a lot of work involved sorting through 100 to 150 strips to find a “match” but it’s well worth it. I would suggest however that a building the size of a two car garage be used. I built my canoes in a single car garage which also housed lawn equipment, snow blower, bikes, many boxes, storage shelves……….. Lets say that I tested the flexibility of many of the strips when swapping them end for end in that small space! 🙂 For detail wood I used cherry for the inner and outer railing(I found this to be brittle under hard use). Sassafras for the seat frame and a variation of tulip poplar and red cedar for the decks. That variety really looks well together in the finished product. You might be able to tell in the photos that rather than make an oval end design on the decks I made a Vee design. I can’t say enough to thank you for the assistance you gave over the phone during the epoxy and fiberglassing process. Between the video, our conversations and my experience with wood this was a great project and one that I plan on doing again. It’s really nice to deal with people who take a personal interest in their customers and show that by sharing their knowledge.
