Canoe seats

[cs]

Not quite there yet and it is undoubtly outlined in "The Strippers Guide...", but its at home and I'm starting to think ahead.

What I'm wondering about is seats in a strip canoe. What I plan on doing is making a frame and weaving the seats from a rope or a webbing, kinda like what I have seen on footstools. Course that ain't the problem or the concern. What I was wondering about was how the seat assembly was fastned in the canoe. Do you just screw your seat frame to the canoe or do you need to provide support down to the bottom of the canoe? Remember I'm still a newbie when it comes to canoeing.

Chad

[Bert Langley]

Chad, any number of ways you can do this, but most often the seats are hung from the inner rails. You want to actually avoid the seats touching the sides of the cane, since with the normal flexing you get this can result in very annoying squeaks. You see a lot of seats made with caning, but I don't really like this since with even moderate use cane seats seem to not hold up very long. Webbing does provide a good alternative.

BTW in the misc. boat thread you mentioned you had milled the strips to 3/4" thick. I hope you meant 3/4" wide.

I've used the 5oz cloth from RAKA on several baots now and I lke it. However, this is not a universaly held opinion. The weave on this cloth is very tight and you really have to take your time as you wet it out. It suits me and the way I glass, but a lot of builders seem to not be very fond of it.

Good Luck

[JimD]

Like Bert says, hung from the inner rails, easily done with through bolts. Of course the rails have to be substantial enough to hold your weight. I have an old strip and canvas canoe under a tarp waiting to be rebuit. The seats are of the old gut mesh, very nice traditional touch if you can still find the stuff anywhere. Around here you can still get snowshoes made that way too.

[Popeye]

ya hang them from the inner rails. no other support. and. leave a few adjustment holes for and aft to accomodate paddlers of different, emm, dimensions, useful when trimming canoe for balance. why arnt you going with cane or rush?

[Bruce Hooke]

I think Bert has pretty well covered the mounting question. I just wanted to comment a little on materials --

I have webbing seats in my canoe and I have been quite happy with them. They are comfortable but they are also tough enough to withstand using the canoe for things like river cleanups where we are wading in waders and piling debris in the canoe (NOTE: this is NOT a wood canoe! :D ). The canoe came with molded plastic seats, which I did not like because you could not sit backwards in the bow seat to paddle solo.

On the other hand, I know of at least one wood-canvas canoe with cane seats that have lasted a over 40 years, to date, without needing to be re-caned. So, for a canoe that is treated carefully, and that is not in constant use, I think cane seats can hold up fine.

Woven rope seats do not sound to me like a good way to go. I have to think that they would get uncomfortable quickly for anyone who is not very well padded in the posterior (unless you are talking about very thin rope (really string or cord) such as is used sometimes to make snowshoes - as a substitute for rawhide). :D

[cs]

You are correct. The strips are 3/4" wide by 1/4" thick. I meant to say that they strips are milled a little thicker than 1/4"

So I should hang the seats from the rails. Now you say inner. Does that mean that I need a rail on the inside of the canoe in addition to the rub rails?

Chad

[JimD]

Traditionally the boat is framed with many light steam bent frames, and the inner rail goes on the inside of those just like many other framed boats. So if your canoe isn't framed or doesn't call for an inner rail you may have to add something. No doubt your plans include some sort of arrangement.

[cs]

I'm sure it does, but I'm the worlds worst at skimming through and just finding what I need. But of course I'm building from a book and not plans. I will look through the book a little more closely tonight.

Chad

[Dave Hadfield]

Finding the right bolts for hanging the seats is difficult. Too big a diameter and you weaken the inwale. Also most people hang their seats too high, adversly affecting stability and making kneeling-on-one-knee-with-the-other-leg-stretched-out awkward.

In the back of WB there are suppliers listed. You can get the best quality there, which are 3/16 bronze (although maybe they're brass) carriage bolts in very long lengths.

You'll also need to make spacers to keep the seat down and so you can tighten the bolt. These don't have to be round dowels. In case you find drilling accurate long holes in narrow stock difficult, you can make them in 2 halves, routing out the hole for the bolt before gluing together.

For webbing, I've had best luck with heavy bootlace. I was able to find some imitation leather thong with monofilament inside. This was tremendous stuff, very strong, easy to work with and in perfect condition after 16 years and dozens of trips. I've also seen standard "work-boot" lacing (bought uncut, by the yard) used.

This webbing is quite comfortable to sit on when worked in a half-inch or 5/8 inch grid. You can varnish it too, which helps it to last -- the way you would babiche (rawhide).

Hints: when you drill the holes in the frame, stagger them alternately a bit to reduce the tendency of the wood to split. Chamfer each hole with a countersink bit to reduce chafe. Thread the cord through loosely at first, leaving 12" unused at the beginning, until the weave is complete. Then sharpen a 6" spike to a long taper. When you tighten the cord, strand by strand, use this spike to hold what you gained.

Make the long piece of the seat frame strong enough. People tend to "drop" into canoe seats if they get a little off balance. I had one break when on a bush trip once. I had to split a young birch and lash it on under the broken limb to fix it.

[ 10-29-2003, 10:57 AM: Message edited by: Dave Hadfield ]

[Chris Coose]

http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid15/p3632a4f7aaea3e643dca280ca5170b48/fde66f6b.jpg

I'd have put up a better image but Sony Imagestation is slug slow. You may note that the drivers seat is set higher than the bow guy. The spacers that determine the height on this 1923 craft are drilled dowels, that could be mistaken for round branches.

Somebody used to sell these thru bolts that had a diamond shaped head that set into the clamp.

I was just over to http://forums.wcha.org/index.php?s=829fab1b5e5aaea002b952191f007440
The Wooden Canoe Heritage Association and found some guy asking if he should put varnish on his original 1929 cane seats.

Cane is best in my book and it is a very handy thing to learn. I remember doing mine next to the stove in January.

[ 10-29-2003, 11:38 AM: Message edited by: Chris Coose ]

[Mike DeHart]

I wonder if woven rope or rush seats would be a good idea for a canoe? Those materials, once wet, take a long time to dry. Sitting on a wet seat for periods of time causes a very uncomfortable itchy irritated condition that the missus calls "boat butt." Canoe seats will get wet. That is a fact of life in canoes. Synthetic webbing absorbs no water and dries quickly. Though I have never had a canoe with cane seats, I hear they dry fast and are comfortable and cool. IF I get the cedar/canvas Old Town I am looking at I will redo the seats in the proper woven cane.

If you learn to stand up and drive the canoe with a proper 12 foot long "settin' pole" like the good whitewater river guides up in Maine, you don't have to worry about seats or their materials.

[Carl Simmons]

Here is a somewhat fuzzy picture of how the seats
were hung in the canoe I built. I used nylon webbing and stainless Steel bolts with wooden
spacers to adjust the height.

http://www.geocities.com/simmonscarl98/Canoe/Canoe-Profile3b.jpg

Carl.

[Todd Bradshaw]

This ought'a freak some people out...
On a Hazen boat that's built to the original plan - with the original sheer line, the best way to mount the seats is to screw those suckers right through the sides of the hull!

SAY WHAT?... Yep, I'm serious. The standard Micmac hull has a sheer line that is actually or very close to the arc of a circle. This gives the boat more depth near the ends than a regular flare-ended sheer line has. This results in two benefits. First, it's drier in waves. If you run big lake or river waves in most traditionally-shaped canoes, water will come over the sides about where the bow paddlers lap is, long before the bow deck ever gets damp.

With Micmac seats mounted the suggested distance (10" as I remember) above the bottom, which is a pretty comfortable height for most folks to paddle from, there is more side depth in the seat areas, both bow and stern, than in most canoes and you stay drier.

This brings-up the second benefit, in that the extra side depth really makes your seating position feel secure, especially in bad conditions. After you get used to it, paddling most "normal" canoes where the seats are bolted close under the gunwales feels like you might as well be sitting on a board across the rails.

If you hang Micmac seats from the gunwale and want them at the suggested heights, you will need to use very long bolts and spacers, which tends to allow them to swing a bit, which isn't good. It's bad to paddle from and can be hard on the gunwales.

Hazen originally mounted seats by putting 2 #12 flathead woodscrews with finish washers through from the outside of the hull and into the ends of each seat bar. When Foster and Forrester bought Wilderness Boats from Hazen, they improved the system. They went to one screw per bar (#12 by about 2.5"-3", flathead with finish washer) and added a cast epoxy doughnut glued to the inside of the hull which the seat bar fit and was glued into. The typical doughnut was about 7/16" thick or so. The "hole" fit the seat bar's end and the doughnut was about 1/2" wider in diameter all around than the end of the bar. These days, something like an epoxy/graphite mix would probably be best. It sounds crazy, but I can show you 30 year old boats that have such systems and the seats and hull are doing fine.

Some people have epoxied (or epoxied and screwed) small 1'x1" ash or mahogany rails along the insides of the hull to support the ends of the seat bars, instead of the doughnuts. They then bolt the bars to the rails or build sliding bow seats that attach to the rails. It's another way to do it and with enough bonding surface area you can eliminate the screws through the hull. Some folks don't like their looks, but they never bothered me.

Not hanging the seats from the gunwale also allowed Wilderness Boats to use narrow, light inwales. During the Foster/Forrester period the width of the gunwales was concentrated in the outwales, which were about 7/8"-1" wide for even more splash protection. The inwales were only about 3/8" thick. Thwarts (actually end handles and the yoke bars - no decks) were screwed through both pieces and the hull from outside and level with the gunwales.

Do I really expect you to trim out your boat this way? Probably not. I have to admit that it sounds totally outrageous, looks pretty unusual and those things tend to scare-off most builders. But for the record, that's the way it was originally done in an effort to build a light, secure and extremely efficient tripping canoe - and it works really well.

[Nicholas Carey]

Originally posted by Dave Hadfield:
Finding the right bolts for hanging the seats is difficult. Too big a diameter and you weaken the inwale. Also most people hang their seats too high, adversly affecting stability and making kneeling-on-one-knee-with-the-other-leg-stretched-out awkward.

In the back of WB there are suppliers listed. You can get the best quality there, which are 3/16 bronze (although maybe they're brass) carriage bolts in very long lengths.You can obtain canoe bolts from places like this, http://www.wooden-canoes.com/material.html
either in a diamond-head style as used by Old Town or the more conventional style used by White, Chestnut, etc.

I believe that 10-24 or 12-24 machine screw threads are what's usually used.

[skuthorp]

I've never resolved the seat problem in my decked Macgreggor. You need different positions for sailing, rowing and paddling or if you have a companion, and different heights. I built a removable sliding seat and discarded it, several other variations including webbing and canvas and dumped them too.
At present I use a shaped block of sealed-suface foam that I wedge where I want it. It moves some but is better than previous efforts, and cheap! :(

[L.W. Baxter]

Chad, should you choose to hang your seats from the gunnels, long carriage bolts in stainless steel are available cheap from any Ace Hardware.

And, with due respect to Bert's experience, I think the seats should be wedged tight against the sides of the boat. Leave them loose and they will move as you paddle, which will cause the bolts to work on your gunnels. If you want to avoid any possibility of squeeking, (though I've not encountered it in my limited experience), you could use rubber grommets, like the kind used on chair legs.

Which brings me to an embarassing little story. On my first canoe, I cut my seats and carrying yoke to length after removing the moulds, and without using a tape measure. I scribed them to fit quite nicely, only problem being that the boat was distorted, having collapse inward about an inch and a half, due to lack of any sort of transverse bracing! redface.gif The upshot was, that lovingly crafted yoke (of birdseye maple!?!) now graces a smaller canoe, and the hand-caned seats were "augmented" with the aformentioned rubber grommets. It all turned out quite nicely, nothing hurt but my pride.

Anyway, that's all behind me now. I don't make mistakes anymore.... :D

By the way, in terms of chair seat material, I've had good results using vinyl lacing of the type used in leatherworking. Easier to work and more durable than natural cane, and to my eye it looks fine... The first seats I made were with natural cane, and they molded during their first winter in the shed! I half suspect that the cheap "spar" varnish I used was more than partially to blame... that's another great piece of advice. Get the good varnish the first time around. Save yourself a lot of moaning, not to mention sandpaper!

[cs]

Todd I pulled out the book last night and you are right. He recomends placing the seat about 8-10" above the bottom and about 36" back from the leading edge of the "football". He also says to glass a cleat on to the side to of the canoe rather than through bolting.

Chad

[Dave Hadfield]

A very practical seat I use when solo is a simple, moveable bench. I cut a rectangle of 3/8" plywood about 8" x 18". I mounted this on 2 "legs", which are just short lengths of 2x10 under each end. I ripped the 2x10s to about 8.5", and screwed the deck into the sides of these. To prevent marring the hull, I cut a strip from a blue foam sleeping pad and wrapped it around the bottom of the legs, stapling it in place.

This bench isn't fastened to the canoe. You move it where you want to trim the boat. It's extremely handy, in this respect.

One leg will fit under it. It's comfortable enough.

Elegant this ain't, but practical it is.

[Doug Canada]

May be of interest;

http://www.greenval.com/FAQbowsliderseat.html

The seat plans can be purchased though the web site as well. I'll be making one for my Osprey (solo canoe). Excellent, canoe site.

[imported_Steven Bauer]

How about these? From the Maine Boatbuilder's Show last March:

http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid56/p316d4899ced80e996f15865b1c24557e/fc759ade.jpg

Steven

[scepticus]

:confused: All this talk about sitting on the seat in a canoe has me confused.

way back when I learned to get about in a canoe, I was taught not to sit on the "seats" at all, but to kneel on the bottom with by butt propped against the seat.

Is this a regional thing, style thing or am I really a clone that was formed fully grown and some devious person implanted silly childhood memories in my brain?

[Carl Simmons]

It depends, by knealing in the bottom of the canoe you lower the CG making the canoe more stable. If you are just having a relaxing canoe trip in flat water seating on the seat is no problem. If things get a little rough you might want to kneal in the canoe.

Carl.

[cs]

Guess you still got them young knees.

Chad

[Carl Simmons]

Sorry for the big picture before, here is a cropped picture of the canoe seat in my 15'6"
Prospector:

http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid86/peaa963c2af258e6d77c8f1b7135001ba/fab282f0.jpg

Carl.

[LongJohn]

Chad -

I'm partial to webbed seats much like Carl's, though I weave them with a little tighter spacing. I find that cane seats stretch and sag over the years and become less comfortable. I've also seen them punctured by a misplaced foot. It's worth looking for good tight webbing - some is woven too loose, making it hard to attach securely and it looks kind of cheap. The best seats I've made have a bit heavier front rail than back - 1.25"+ in front, 1"+ in the back and the front rail is both beveled and rounded for comfort. The bow seat should have both rails cut and shaped to the larger dimension for when you want to turn the boat around and paddle solo. Be sure to round over the inside edges of the frame as well. Pull the webbing as tight as you can with vice grips and clamps and/or a helper. I've used brass escutcheon pins from the hardware store to tack the webbing in place - just be sure they're solid brass, not just coated.

You might want to make the seating area of the bow seat somewhat wider so as to allow the bow paddler to comfortably scoot close to the gunwale without hanging a cheek off the edge.

I find 10" height to be just about right for comfortable kneeling and sitting and just barely big enough for my big insulated boots to fit under when paddling in the winter. If you have big feet you might want seats a bit higher. BTW, my knees are pretty old and stiff too, but the benefits of kneeling far outweigh the difficulty of straightening back out again. Kneeling gives you lower center of gravity, better "feel" for the boat, better control, better reach, and way better body mechanics. That said, on a day-long paddle I probably sit 2/3 of the time just because it's more comfortable.

- John

[JimConlin]

Ready-made seats in web or cane field, ash or spruce frame, are available from :
Shaw&Tenney in Orono, ME www.shawandtenney.com (http://www.shawandtenney.com)
Porter's woodworking in Patten, ME 207 528 2106

Both offer good seats at a fair price.

[Ron Williamson]

I sit/kneel with my feet under the seat,my weight shifts fore and aft,knees to butt.When my knees get sore I alternate putting one foot forward at a time.
I rarely actually sit on the seat,it doesn't feel right somehow.Maybe there isn't enough connection with the boat.The seat's(cane or nylon seatbelt webbing)actual comfort and durability are not much of an issue.
R

[cs]

You guys are great and have given me a lot to think on.

Ron I wish I could do that. If I spend more than 3 or 4 minutes on my knees it takes an hour to recover, or longer. In fact I've given up getting down on my right knee all together.

Chad

[pumpkin]

Todd, I am interested in what you had to say here. I am not very interested in driving screws through the side of my canoe but would epoxy seat support rails to the hull and bolt the seats to them. Do you have any additional input?

I also want to hang a third seat in the center and use it for kid type passengers. In another thread you suggested 2 carry yokes 18” apart. I was thinking that if the center seat was removable then yokes could be installed in place of the seat for tripping. If the center seat was placed forward of center (to offset my weight) then only one yoke would need to be removed when the seat is installed. In the 18' micmac there should be enough length for three seats.

Your thoughts would be appreciated.

Matthew