NT Trapper

[Whirly]

G'Day Col,
Thanks for the comments. 1 & 3 are a given. It's great to have the depth of knowledge and experience found in this forum to draw on. A bloke can learn a hell of a lot by reading and looking at posts by Mick, Chuck, River Rat Ron and a heap of other experienced boat builders.

Speaking of which, your Trapper wasn't too shabby either Mate, (I read your build a number of times) and if this one of mine comes anywhere near what you produced, I'll be a very Happy Chappy. Well done.

The big beastie is over on its back at the moment, getting the gaps filled. Took some pics, but left the camera at the "Toy shop"

Will post more pics when more progress has been made. Another weekend coming up, the wife is in Darwin for another week, so what's a bloke to do with all this spare time?? ........

[RobRassy]

Geee! Don't check the forum for a week and yet another Trapper is built

G'day Whirly, welcome and thanks for posting your build

What an envious location to build a boat!
My imagination is working overtime, wondering what it must be like tucked up in your work space as the tropical rain thunders down, the smothering humidity and the smells of sawdust and resin mingled with the wet bush

A couple outside pics of your camp would be great

Like everyone else I'm looking forward to seeing your project come together, its gunna to be one hell of a canoe, and well built too by the looks


Rob

[Whirly]

G'Day Rob, nice to here from you. (Was just about to post the below when you popped up). Yeah mate, at this rate we'll be able to hold a trapper convention The builds you and Col did were a real inspiration and I enjoyed looking through your posts.. still do.. I doubt this will turn out as flash as either of yours, but I reckon she'll do the job. As to looking around this place, once she comes out of the play room..er..I mean workshop, I'll try to take some shots so the backdrop will give you some idea of the area. (Need to keep the boat theme happening). Speaking of which- this is sort of related.....


then again, maybe not. The system is playing silly-buggers. Sometimes lets me preview, sometimes says the images are over 825 pixels and I'm pretty sure I've checked every one. Either way I can't submit the post. Ah well, will try again later.........

[hairymick]

G'day Whirly,

I use Picasa 3 to edit and resize my pics.

http://picasa.google.com/

it is free to download, real easy to use (I need that). I usually resize to 640 X 480 i think it is.

[Whirly]

Thanks Mick, I'll give that a go. Pretty sure all mine were 640 x whatever it is on the drop-down. There is an 800 x something in photobucket as well, but thought I was playing safe going one less. I have a play with picasa, ...or perhaps I'll wait a bit... I seem to remember something about the kids or missus getting picasa for emailing and something about it converting every photo in the whole damn pc at the time (and there are thousnds on this thing at the moment) There's also snapfish I guess, either way I'll do some research- I've got some time as I've just finished a saturation coat on the hull, so can't do any more for a bit......

[Whirly]

..ok, another try…


…not a lot more progress on the canoe itself, as mentioned, she’d been flipped over, wire stitches removed and the filling of gaps done.


…so what to do while the gunk dries? Thought I might try my hand at putting a paddle together. I’d looked at what Kurt Maurer had done with his ‘Bird-mouth’ technique and thought that was pretty cool and worth a try. I only had some pretty standard sort of pine to use, but figured it would do just to see if I could make it happen. Over to the old trusty bench saw, set everything up to start ripping strips….and find the old trusty bench saw has karked it…Shiezer! now vhat vee are to do??... well- modify, adapt and overcome of course…


Strips were ripped and then again to get them to size



Now, I had all the bits I needed and the next step was to cut the ‘birds mouths’, but the only table saw I had was kaput and I didn’t fancy trying to get a 45 degree cut out of my home-made setup. The bench saw has a router attached and it, thankfully was still functional, so a lump to wood with a 90 degree channel, on a 45 degree angle was required. Back to the improvised bench saw for some more improvisation.



Then onto the router to give it a go



And it almost looks like the real deal. The router bit is a little long in the tooth and not as sharp as it could be, so something else to get next town trip…



I never did find the bit in Kurt’s blog, where he attached the handle to the shaft, so again- modify, adapt, etc


And onto the blade. I’d seen plenty of laminated blades done, but didn’t have any timber suitable and wasn’t too keen on sticking a piece of ply on the end. I do have some nice thin, wide planks of Ironwood, but as Ironwood is up there with some of the heaviest woods in the world, I didn’t think it would do. I did however find an old table restoration project I was going to do, before termites got at the wood. There was enough un-chewed stuff to work with and I think it’s Tassie Oak- don’t know if that is good paddle material or not. Oh well, it was a bit of wood that was wide enough.


So, have handle, shaft and blade- how to attach blade to hollow handle? The hard way, make the shape of the inside of the shaft onto the blade….good grief….
Mark some lines and follow them with a saw


..then do some innovative work with a belt sander



..followed by bevelling the old way.


Mark out the shaft


..and create another ‘bird mouth’…well, some sort of mouth anyway…


..and with a bit of tweaking here and there I ended up with

..a really tall paddle. Will need to cut the shaft down a bit before sticking it all together.

Any suggestions on correct paddle length? I stand 5’10” or about 178cm. The paddle is, at present, 5’ 6”. Also any info on good timber to use (Australian/available timber) would be greatly appreciated.

I’ll probably go down this track for paddle construction when I have the right equipment to do it with and the right timber, and the right know-how for attaching things like handles and blades, but this one was fun to make and will probably be fine for calm, slow paddling and anyhow, the blade looks nice……

[PiratePete]

Adapt, Improvise & Over Come


Just love your work Whirly

[Whirly]

I said modify, didn't I?...and I said it twice...sheesh...

[RobRassy]

Hi Whirly, I used to have the same problem resizing on photobucket
I eventually found that I had to wait a moment after resizing before clicking to the next screen to give the website time to reprocess the data, otherwise I had to wait till next day before the image came right.

You seem to have that paddle building pretty well sorted
You'll be able to test it for length by going for paddle before fitting the end

I've just spent a few weekends laminating and shaping a couple paddles
They are beaver tails one slightly smaller than the other, and not as powerful looking as yours.
I first built a two ply templates (1 x beaver tail & 1 x otter tail), screwed it to a handle and took them for a paddle. The overall length of both test paddles was 63 inches, blades aprox 24" x 6 3/8" beaver tail - 27" x 5 3/4" otter tail.
After quite a bit of paddling the beaver tail was decided on with a slightly shorter handle.
I am 5ft 4inches and 60" overall seems about right for me


Rob

[Whirly]

Thanks for that Rob, like canoe making, I’m new to this paddle business so all the info I can gather is a big help. That one I put together was a combo of Kurt’s handle and Michael Storer’s blade pattern. I like the look of that otter-tail shape and some of the paddles I see on the net and places like Oldsparkey’s forum look like they belong in an art gallery as opposed to a lake. Good idea of making up some temp paddles to try out.

What sort of timber/s are you using for your paddles?

…and as to the photobucket thing, yep, Driver Error for sure . Just need to wait and make sure they have resized before copying