Wood-and-Canvas Canoes

From bark to factory

By the late 1800s, builders in Maine and Ontario were copying the bark canoe’s shape and structure in materials a shop could produce in quantity: cedar ribs and planking in place of bark-lined sheathing, and canvas in place of bark ^{1 2}. The construction still works from the outside in, like a bark canoe turned inside out: the shape comes first, then the skin.

The key difference is the form. A wood-canvas canoe is built over a solid form, a full-size hull shape planked or stripped with wood, with metal straps set into it at every rib station ². One form could build hundreds of identical canoes.

Ribs and planking

The order ²:

1. Stems: steam-bent ash, set at each end of the form.
2. Inwales: long spruce strips clamped along the sheer line.
3. Ribs: northern white cedar, about 1/4 to 3/8 inch thick and 2-1/4 inches wide, tapered toward the ends. They’re steamed, bent over the form, and nailed to the inwales while hot, one at each strap.
4. Planking: thin cedar, 1/8 or 5/32 inch thick and 2-3/4 to 3-3/4 inches wide, laid lengthwise over the ribs and fastened with brass tacks. Each tack goes through plank and rib and hits the steel strap underneath, which clinches (curls) its point back into the rib.

When the planking is done, the hull is lifted off the form: a complete, open-gunwale wooden canoe, light and flexible, but not yet watertight ².

The canvas skin

Canvas is laid over the inverted hull, pulled tight end to end (often in a canvas stretcher, with the hull pressed down into it), and tacked along the sheer and at the stems ². Then:

• Filler: two or three coats of oil-based filler rubbed into the weave, then cured two or three weeks until hard ².
• Paint: enamel on the outside; varnish inside.
• Trim: outwales over the canvas edge, decks, seats, thwarts, and brass stem bands to protect the ends ².

The hull flexes when it’s beached or bumps a rock, which is part of why wood-canvas canoes last: the planking gives, the canvas takes the abrasion, and canvas can be replaced when it wears out ². Restoring an old canoe usually means stripping the canvas, replacing broken ribs and planks, and recanvasing.

Where to see them

The Wisconsin Canoe Heritage Museum in Spooner opened in 2010 in a former feed mill, built around Jeff and Jill Weber Dean’s collection of antique canoes. It shows canoes by J. Henry Rushton, B.N. Morris, Tom MacKenzie, and bark canoe builder Henri Vaillancourt, among others, and runs a working canoe shop for builders and restorers ³. Compare a Morris’s outside stems and decorated decks with the ash, cedar, and spruce described above, and look at how the planks lap.

Try it

Find an old wood-canvas canoe (estate sales and barns in northern Wisconsin still turn them up), turn it over, and read it: count the ribs, look for broken ones, look at how the planks are tacked, and check whether the canvas is sound, cracked, or patched. Inside, find the clinched tack points on the ribs.

What to take from this

A wood-canvas canoe is built on a solid form with a metal strap at each rib station: ash stems, spruce inwales, steam-bent cedar ribs, then thin cedar planking with brass tacks that clinch against the straps. Off the form, canvas is stretched and tacked on, filled and cured for weeks, painted, and trimmed. The hull flexes and can be recanvased. The Wisconsin Canoe Heritage Museum in Spooner shows the great builders’ work.