First day of stripping.

Well - what a day. Here in Chilliwack, the heat was up in the mid 30's, and I really don't think I could have picked a worse time to do the stripping - the temperature and sunlight made the stripping gel dry in minutes and I found it took a while to work out a good rhythm where the gel would have time to do it's work but not enough to dry before I took it up along with the old varnish. The varnish stripper I'm using is "Circa 1850: Heavy Body Paint and Varnish Remover", seems to work quite well, although it is a bit expensive. It's thick enough to adhere to the vertical walls of the hull and the underside of the thwarts and gunwales.

I debated taking the thwarts off to do the stripping on them, but decided against it out of fears that doing so would allow the hull to relax and deform. If and when I do, I'll place a bar clamp across the width in the position of each thwart.

Also, during the stripping process, I tried a few different implements and found that large synthetic steel wool pads worked quite well and didn't clog up too badly. Synthetic meaning the plastic type (which surprisingly wasn't eaten away at by the stripper), because I got the impression from the WHCA forums that steel wool particles left behind would stain the wood down the road.

I didn't cover as much area as I had thought, but I'm still quite happy with the results so far.

Some pictures.

As a reference for the beginning of the project, here are some pics of the canoe as we received it:

The New Canoe

Well, not exactly new. Last weekend, we found and purchased a Greenwood canoe from a woman that apparently came from an estate sale. The canoe is in great condition and there's very little to be done on it to get it back onto the water. I say "very little" because I've seen much worse. She estimates it's a 1973 - although a helpful fellow on the WHCA forums suggest it might be later in the 70's since the maker only then started stamping the stem bands with serial numbers, which ours has.

The way I see, it I'll be:

• Stripping the old varnish
• Recanvasing the hull
  
• Replacing the outer gunwale with one of mahogany
• Installing brass stem-bands
• Installing new brass fasteners all-around

So, follow me as I attempt this. It's something I've always wanted to do and am excited to see how it turns out.