She Floats!

The finshed article*.

* OK, she still needs seats...

Painting in the name

The last task is to paint on the name FATBOY. The "Dan Brown" font has the benefit that you can still read the name correctly even though the canoe has capsized.

Seats.

Finally settled on a seat design.

34mm square pine stock. Edges rounded over on the router table, and then a vee-groove routed into the pine.

6mm marine ply for the spreaders, with no stiffening since the rails will be screwed to the boat.

The the ply was chamfered with a plane, and then filleted to the rails with thickened epoxy.

Closed-cell foam will finish the surface off, and provide padding for my bum, once the seat's been varnished.

Paint, paint, paint

The Christmas Hiatus is past, the weather is slightly better. This means there's been time for two coats of marine undercoat , followed by one coat of light blue gloss. Just got to leave her now for it to harden off.

Paddles

The "sugar island" paddle blank, with the carving guides set using spray paint.

The blade is roughed down to 3/8" with a smoothing plane, then contoured using a spoke shave and finished off with a cabinet scraper and sandpaper on a long board.









The grip was "carved" using a belt sander.















And the finished item waiting for a glass-fibre reinforced tip and varnish.

Varnish

Inside of the hull now varnished.

The first varnish

Finally managed to get the first coat of varnish down on the inside of the hull.