Coming in July 2024: This Fancy Old Canoe: A Comprehensive Guide to Restoring Antique Canoes

by Mike Elliott, Kettle River Canoes

email: artisan@canoeshop.ca

This Fancy Old Canoe: A Comprehensive Guide to Restoring Antique Canoes picks up where This Old Canoe: How to Restore Your Wood-Canvas Canoe left off. Whether you are an avid collector of antique canoes or you have limited woodworking experience and just want to get your family’s heirloom canoe back on the water, the two books work together to provide the techniques necessary to achieve success in your canoe-restoration adventure.

Repairing antique canoes can be a supreme challenge because their artisans built them with beauty and longevity in mind. Using over 400 photos and more than 100 plans and illustrations, This Fancy Old Canoe is designed to simplify the restoration process, guide you through it, and provide a measure of clarity to these complex tasks.

The book covers every aspect you may encounter in fancy old canoes, including:

• identifying your canoe and understanding its construction
• replacing and weaving cane seats
• reverse engineering highly curved ends
• removing and installing pocketed inwales, wide outwales, and sponsons (air chambers attached to the sides of the canoe)
• repairing sailing rigs and floor systems
• applying fancy hand-painted designs
• sourcing materials

Many antique canoes, built in the Peterborough region of Ontario, Canada, are all-wood construction. They do not have a canvas cover. Instead, they rely on precise joinery to create a water-tight hull. This Fancy Old Canoe describes how to repair and replace every component in these elegant examples of floating art.

This Fancy Old Canoe: A Comprehensive Guide to Restoring Antique Canoes will be available in July 2024. Stay tuned.