Canoe seats

[cs]

Was going to go down to the wood place today a get some 4/4 white oak to cut down to make my rub rails for my canoe and while I was at it I was going to get the material for making the seat frames.

On this canoe the seats are attached to cleats which are fastned to the sides of the canoe. The book really don't cover the thickness of the seat frames (or I missed it and don't have the book with me) but it appears that they use about a 1" material.

In my mind this seems to small, but I could be wrong. I will make the seats themselves from a nylon webbing. What size material would you use for the frames?

BTW I will use white oak to make the seat frames with.

Chad

[FG]

material dimensions depend on span of the frame.

For my solo canoe width of 29 inches at the gunnel, 1 X 1 1/4 oak is plenty strong/stiff for my 200#. Canoecraft and Gilpatricks books both show 3/4 X 1 1/2 for their tandem canoes.

What kind of canoe?

I like the caned seat too. It's quite a bit more work though. How will you fasten the webbing?

[cs]

It is a Hazen Micmac. The wideest part of the beam is around 36", but the seats will be much closer to the stems. So I reckon some 4/4 w. oak will be fine.

I like the nylon webbing for strength and comfort and ease and availibility. Haven't worked the details yet, but will probably fasten the webbing with small brass screws.

Chad

[Jack Heinlen]

Chad,

You might consider weaving the seat material ala a Shaker chair. It would require a mininum of fastenings and would look sharp.

Stock that is finished to 4/4 would be plenty strong.

[alphatopher]

4/4 thick material will work just fine. Traditionally, most seats are made out of mahagony or ash.

[Paul Scheuer]

I'll vote for cane. This is the seat from an old Morris. The frames are mahogany, 0.75 in by 2 in., comfortably rounded.

I think a full inch is going to look "bulky", unless you chamfer the lower edge. The Morris trick was to round over only the top edge of the seats and thwarts to yield a graceful look.

For a stripper, I think I'd laminate a really cool contoured set of seats mimicing the formed aluminum grumman seats attached at the gunnels.
http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid49/pe2e05bc9f6a287c26a9f50753fcc49de/fcb3da36.jpg

[Jack Heinlen]

Just a note: real cane, hand woven, with holes in the frame, is lovely, and holds up pretty well, but I bought some ready made from Shaw and Tenney once that had pre-woven cane splined into the frame. The bend at the spline is a real weak point that only held up for a couple years.

[Fitz]

I vote for hand caned seats too. They do hold up pretty well if cared for too. I find the splined seats to be a lot of work if you have to replace the caning. Getting the glue and spline out of the groove is a real PITA. Also hand caning is fun to learn and is a neat skill to impress SWMBO with furniture projects.

Another option is wood slat seats. Many Canadian canoes came with slat seats presumably for durability. You could probably make a very nice dressy set of slat seats easily for your stripper!!

[Bruce Hooke]

Both of my plastic (sorry! :D ) Old Town's have webbing seats. The wood frame is 13/16" thick. The webbing seats are comfortable and durable and look fine IMOOP. While not as traditional looking as cane I'd guess that they will handle a good bit more abuse than cane. Added note: I don't intentionally abuse my canoes, but I do use them to give rides on the river at river festivals, which means lots of kids climbing in and out of the canoes with muddy shoes and so on. I also use the canoes for river cleanups which involves loading all sorts of garbage from soda bottles to old tires and metal into the canoe -- NOT something I would do with a wood canoe!

I've seen canoes with fancy molded seats (one of my Old Town's actually came with a plastic version of this concept). While comfortable, my biggest objection to these sorts of seats is that you cannot comfortably turn around in the forward seat to paddle solo.

[ 04-15-2004, 10:06 AM: Message edited by: Bruce Hooke ]

[Dave Hadfield]

I like caned seats, sure, but I've seen a lot of old canoes with holes in the seats. I do not like lawn chair webbing -- it just doesn't match a wooden strip-built boat, IMHO.

In 1987 I built a 17ft Prospector which has taken me for hundreds of trips. For seat webbing I bought 50 ft of commercial boot-lace. It was designed to look like a traditional material, but had a nylon monofilament inside. Standard bootlace material would have worked to.

Anyway, I drilled the holes (staggering them a bit to reduce splitting force), countersinked them a little, and threaded the stuff through in a standard square weave, leaving 8 inches not pulled through at the start.

Once the weave was in place I went back to the start and heaved it all very tight, using an awl jammed into the holes with the string to hold the tightness each time I took a fresh grip.

This worked very well. Tight, comfortable, looks great, dry and no seat maintenance has been required during its 17 years of use.

That's what worked for me, anyway....

[NormMessinger]

As the sign on a bar along the highway in Miami Arizona said, "Always Rum for One More." Opinions in this case, eh?

I've done it both ways. The first Stripper LaMess and I did had seats with parachute cord in a 2" pattern something like Dave describes but not pulled thight. The flotation cushion fit on it and made a comfortable seat. Ugly but satisfactory. For the second, a 16' Micmac we did hand woven cane seats. Beautiful (If I must say so my self.) I can't say how it held up since the canoe did not get much use before we went our seperate ways.

Chad is interested in getting on the water so I say he go with the butt ugly nylon webbing and promise us you will do hand woven cane seats next winter.

[Squeeze]

Reluctant to promote commercial projects, nonetheless - Martin Step at Greenval (http://www.greenval.com) has published plans for a beautiful and versatile caned seat. It's a good example of creative thought. Those of you considering making canoe seats might review what Martin has created. Though not strictly traditional, there are concepts worth considering incorporating into a traditional seat.

[Jack Heinlen]

I like the look of a Shaker chair seat. It's not as elegant as cane, but there is a certain pragmatism to this canoe which would be copacetic.

I'm wondering if there aren't some synthetic fabrics being made today with a much softer hand and look than simple nylon webbing? You'd want to seal the frame well, CPES and all that stuff, but practically speaking it would be nice to make this so it doesn't have to be re-done next winter.

Anyone have a canoe website for Chad to post this on? I'll bet there is, and that they've argued it well.

[Popeye]

http://www.greenval.com/seats.jpg

[Popeye]

..could have SWMBO do all the paddling while you sit aft and wick yerself up some bum shelves.

[Bruce Hooke]

The webbing on my canoe seats is certainly a big step up in quality and feel from the cheap plastic stuff used on most lawn chairs I am familiar with. This is what it looks like on the Old Town website:

https://www.oldtowncanoe.com/product_photos/t90.jpg

Traditional it's not but I don't find it to be ugly. I would not consider it appropriate on a traditional wood & canvas canoe but on a more "modern" looking craft I don't see anything wrong with it. It's a fairly "functional" look so it would not fit in on a boat with lots of pretty wood details and florishes, but if the overall look of the boat is more "functional" then it's a consistent and practical solution IMOOP.

[Dan Lindberg]

Everybody has comments about the fill material, (for this I like the plastic cain) but only 1 comment about construction, ie, dowels. One word - don't waste your time. Most of the old seats I've got are factory doweled and have failed. Go with a mortise & tendon joint instead, easy to make and much stronger.

Also, I believe I used 7/8 White Oak for a couple seat frames, plenty strong, but heavy.

Dan

[cs]

Dan you read my mind. That was how I was planning on building the seat frames. As far as the nylon webbing I was going to go to the local climbing/canoeing outfitters and get some webbing that a harness might be made from.

Chad

[Bruce Hooke]

I certainly agree that mortise and tenon joints would be stronger than dowels.

However, Dan, I am curious about how the dowel joints typically fail. Do the dowels themselves break, or do they break out of the bottom of the laterals, or?

[Dan Lindberg]

Hi Bruce,

Both.

A bit of background, my current addiction is restoring old W/C canoes, and I've only been doing it for about 4 years. I have currently finished 4 and have 5 projects waiting, and I have looked at at least that many canoes that other folks had. My projects have ranged from the 1920's to the 1950's. But, I am not a pro.

I think that all of the seat frames (on projects)I've seen have been broken in one fashion or another. I have seen the frame material cracked and broken out, dowels broken and dowels bent. Sometimes if the joint isn't apart it's at least loose.

On one project, I restored the original frames and that was more work then just building new frames. All the joints need to be taken apart, cleaned-up wood straightened/repaired, reglued and finally refinished.

On the other projects it was easier just to duplicate the originals.

Dan

[Jack Heinlen]

Chad,

Dan's and Bruce's posts are well worth a close look.

This would be a great place to practice your mortise and tenon joinery. And as Dan said, 7/8 would do the trick.

And re the seat material, if you go with the webbing I'd contact Old Town Canoe and see what they use. It's a local call for me, and I'll try to find out if you want.

I'd hesitate to go to the local outfitter and buy climbing webbing. That stuff is meant to stretch and might give you TB(tired butt) pretty quickly. And, twenty years ago, the last I did any climbling, it was woven in a flattened tube. Not very pretty either, and that photo Bruce posted shows how sharp such construction can look. I'll bet OTC uses some sort of dacron. I'll bet OTC would even sell you a small amount.

[ 04-15-2004, 07:40 PM: Message edited by: Jack Heinlen ]

[J. Wellington Wimpy]

http://www.greenval.com/mattawa.jpg

[Todd Bradshaw]

Old Town webbed seats use nylon webbing - but - it's wide and a very tight automotive-style weave. This has very limited stretch under light to moderate loads, which is about all you're going to generate by sitting on it. It's stretch doesn't figure into the equation much at all until you start approaching it's working limits, where it acts as a fail-safe against explosive rupture - which can happen with less stretchy, polyester (Dacron) or polypropylene webbing.

Jack's point about the stretch of most climbing webbing (1/2"-1" tube or flat) is quite valid and it stretches even more when it gets wet. If you do use it, plan on installing it while wet and even so, expect it to sag after you've been sitting on the seat for a couple hours. Between outings, it will likely draw all the way back up but you may not like it after an afternoon out on the water. A lot of climbing shops also carry 2" flat for making harnesses, etc. You want the smooth, seat-belt style, not the more textured, more unbalanced weave flat webbing or the tubular versions.

Take an 8-penny nail, clamp it in the vice grips, heat it with a torch and melt your screw holes in the webbing if you can't get the screws to drive right through it without pulling or breaking the threads. Finish washers on the screws wouldn't be a bad idea as they will spread the load out over about three times the area of just a screw head and do it without rupturing more yarns. I haven't looked under an Old Town seat to see how they attach their webbing, but if it's with screws, nails, staples or other metal perforations of the frame's varnish, the long-term result is fairly predictable. Luckily, canoe seats have a fairly easy life it will probably take ten to twenty years of normal use before the wood around the holes gets really nasty.

Dacron webbing would certainly be more stretch resistant, especially if you plan to use stuff that's only an inch or less in width, but it's hard to find, especially on the local retail market. The same is true of high-end polypropylene (it doesn't all look like lawn chair fabric, some is really good stuff and it has nearly zero stretch) but the only common source I can think of are some of the high-end car-top carrier straps and they are quite pricy.

I can get you Kevlar or Spectra...if you don't mind buying a full roll to the tune of about $300-$400... :D

The first stripper I ever saw was a Gene Jensen marathon C-2 U.S.C.A. Cruiser when we were all registering for a race in 1971 or '72 - beautiful gloss-varnished cedar hull. It was the prettiest canoe I'd ever seen in my life. Then they rolled it over, upright on the grass and I just about dropped my teeth! It had those Sawyer/Moore-style aluminum tubes with their ends pinched flat for thwarts, sliding seats with tube frames and the seats were webbed with this hideous yellow and green lawn chair webbing! What at first had looked like an attempt to build a beautiful boat was in reality a full-blown racing machine with no holds barred. It was built from strips strictly because they provided the lightest, stiffest, fastest hull and there wasn't an ounce of extra weight anywhere on the boat. This was before things like Kevlar, foam cores, epoxy resin and most of the modern sophisticated fiberglass weaves were developed. Even so, this 18.5' long boat only weighed about 40 lbs. and the ugly seats were the lightest they could possibly build.

[Dave Hadfield]

Popeye, that's a stunning canoe. Gorgeous.

Yours?

[Don Chapin]

Chad,

Mortise and tenons work for the seats, but so do floating tenons and the miller stepped dowels, I've never had any break, even using them for row boat and skiff seats which inadvertently get stood upon from time to time getting in and out. I think I would cane the seats though, and use the plastic cane to learn how and create a slightly more durable seat. It might be a great around the fire exercise while camping.

[Jack Heinlen]

Old Town Canoe buys its seats from Porter's Woodworking, 207-528-2106.

[Jack Heinlen]

Another number, American Cord and Webbing out of Rhode Island, 401-762-5500, is the source. They likely don't retail, but those two numbers should get you a source for some very nice webbing for your seats. smile.gif

[ 04-16-2004, 11:34 AM: Message edited by: Jack Heinlen ]

[MJC]

I've used plastic cane from

H.H. Perkins (http://www.hhperkins.com/hhperkins/servlet/catalog?action=getcat&parent=8)

and the instructions in "Mac" McCarthy's book Featherweight Boatbuilding (http://www.woodenboatstore.com/store/Prodinfo.asp?number=325-104&item=1) (available from our sponsor).

[Dan Lindberg]

Thought I'd throw out another comment, this time about the fill material.

On my 1st canoe, 1st set of seats, I used webbing. I didn't look very hard and because I didn't like want I saw from the sewing/fabric shops, I used some of that flat trailer winch webbing. Don't know what it was but it was very strong and 2" wide. But I didn't like it and replaced it with cain. The 2 problems were 1) the webbing retained water my bottom side was usually wet, and 2) it was very heavy. Whether this is representitive of other webbing materials or not I have no idea, but I would suspect any fabric based webbing would retain water.

On my next project, where weight is my top concern, I'm still undecided to use cain or lawn chair webbing. Like Todd points out, sometimes ugly is lighter. (goal is a 45-50 lb, 18.5 ft tripper)

Dan

[Popeye]

dave;

thats a shameless cut and paste from the greenval site.

someday i'm going to make a nice cane seat like that.

ted moores also gives suggestion on everything from a basic solid plywood, with drilled holes, seat on up. how come 'rush' is never used? have seen, in my days, very skilled , green-grass basket weaving also.

[FG]

Gilpatrick and Featherweight books have nearly identical instructions. I'd get the Gilpatrick book as it has more canoe designs. I've heard plenty of people who like their puddle ducks.

[Bruce Hooke]

Originally posted by Todd Bradshaw:
...I haven't looked under an Old Town seat to see how they attach their webbing, but if it's with screws, nails, staples or other metal perforations of the frame's varnish, the long-term result is fairly predictable. Luckily, canoe seats have a fairly easy life it will probably take ten to twenty years of normal use before the wood around the holes gets really nasty...The webbing in the seats in my Old Town canoes is held in place with narrow crown staples on the inside face of the wood frame. One of my canoes was a rental canoe before I got it so it saw pretty heavy use and so far the seats seem to be holding up fine. I assume the seats are original but I do not know that for a fact.

[Bruce Hooke]

Originally posted by Dan Lindberg:
Thought I'd throw out another comment, this time about the fill material.

On my 1st canoe, 1st set of seats, I used webbing. I didn't look very hard and because I didn't like want I saw from the sewing/fabric shops, I used some of that flat trailer winch webbing. Don't know what it was but it was very strong and 2" wide. But I didn't like it and replaced it with cain. The 2 problems were 1) the webbing retained water my bottom side was usually wet, and 2) it was very heavy. Whether this is representitive of other webbing materials or not I have no idea, but I would suspect any fabric based webbing would retain water...As Todd noted, the webbing used by Old Town is very tight nylon stuff much like seat belt material. I have never noticed it retaining any water and I've certainly gotten it wet.

[cs]

Okay, here is what will happen.

Went out yesterday and got me some lumber, (1) 9" x 12' 4/4 white oak and a (1) 7" x 8' 4/4 ash (non-boat stuff) for $42. Don't know if that is a good price, but that be it.

So I will use this white oak (along with some left overs from another project) and make some inwales (7/8" x 3/8") and some outwells (7/8" x 1/2") I'll also put in some portage brackets (7/8" x 1.5") and than use the remander to make the seat frames (probably 7/8" x 2").

I will swing by the outfitters and look at their webbing. They have black webbing in 1" & 2" widths (probably will use the 1" with 1/2" between runs).

This weekend I hope to get the inside glassed so next week I can start with this other stuff that is listed below. Finally got a hold of a thickness planer so I can plane the rub rails for my weekender and hopefully this weekend I can get those attached.

Chad