JEM Watercraft

Hi Matt, and everyone

Just had a lovely Easter break and built another Iroquois, this time with a customer who had bought the plans from Jem, last year, having seen my Ebay ad.. He and his son did a splendid job, and in little over 2 days completed a splendid canoe which they are very proud of..
see http://picasaweb.google.com/andreas.p.russ/Canoe
We've had brilliant weather, and got sunburnt, hence the headscarf used by Andreas in the later photos !
This time we built the canoe a bit wider than we've ever done, which was an interesting experiment, and turned out very nicely, with a very stable boat which nevertheless was easy to paddle through the water, which is lovely.

I'm afraid we are still using polyester resin, but these days I roll it on all over, then cover it with Sadolin extra durable varnish, and the combination seems to work well.

Hope you like the pics. You will see the unconventional way we put these canoes together, it takes us just 2 hours from a standing start to get a canoe-shape up on the bench, which fires up the children ( and the adults) and keeps us going,, we worked 14 hours on the first day!!!

Thanks again, we are delighted with the Iroquois, Matt, hope you are getting to sell some more versions of the plans!

John www.birchcanoes.com ( email me on john@birchcanoes.com )

Fantastic!

Hi John,

Good job mate. Another kid to the dark side - outstanding.

I particularly like the shots of the little feller using the draw knife.

Mate, a couple of questions, if you don't mind.

The pice that the little bloke was shabing. Is that a sort of brace for the sides.?

also, Are you installing stem plates between the panels?

Your Iroquois are real nice looking boats mate. well done.

Thanks Matt, and thanks Mick..

Yes, the side bracing pieces are used under the seats, which are solid wood, and under the yoke. I didn't know the name for the other bits, "stem plates", but yes, I suppose they are, they just speed up and firm up the process of getting the ends sorted out..

However, I missed out both the heavy bracing, the heavy wooden seats, and the stem plates in my latest Iroquois, which I launched this morning, called the Goosefeather as it is lovely and light, and not out of birchply, but out of the considerably inferior marine ply. However, it's my best boat yet, and despite the poor quality of the marine ply ( the outer laminates were too thin, and there were only 3 of them, and I'm sure I spotted some voids), I expect it will last well.

Here's the photos:
http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/jclohesy/ ... osefeather

Again this took about 24 hours of work from start to finish..
Thanks for your encouragement,

John