OK so first let me say if you get one of these canoes to fix for yourself u better be able to make ur own ash strips to replace the old ones. Becuz i called the canoe mfg local rep (now just to let u know i live in upstate NY and the canoes are made in Vt. On the eastern side of NY, like i can drive to VT in an hour and could get to the mfg location in say 4 hours. So i found out there is a dealer in Saratoga, like 20 min away. Not the other side of the country. Called them and asked about new strips. Guy said he would recco that i wait till they get an order coming in from mfg so i don’t have to pay for shipping. I said ok get me a price. call back in like 3 -4 days (he told me about how long til i should call back) and then he gets back to me and says the strips will be around 500. Dollars. yikes!!!
Luckily my brother in law is a contractor master craftsman carpenter type. Old school, and lives out in the country, farm area small village. He just the past few years was involved in making a barn type facility for someone near where lives. His customer has lots of acres and trees. Thom (my bro-in-law) picked out trees and this guy made lumber enough to build the barn (to b used for wedding receptions and the like). So lots of trees cut into lots of lumber. And Thom ended up with some of this lumber. Also my wife’s side of the family had a big reunion, and i happened to speak to him there, saying i was needing ash and thinking about ordering a 20 ft board from a lumber yard. He said no don’t bother come up i should have one you can take. So i don’t know how much that board would have cost, but plenty. Plenty becuz it needed to be like 19-20 ft long about 6″ wide and no knots. Plenty plenty it would have been. Thank you thank you thank you Thom.
So look at the board and see in the first pic that it had a curve to it. i’m thinking how we gonna cut this into strips when its got a curve thats more than the width of the board?? Well sonny boy to the rescue! He says no worry we just put the convex side against the saw fence and run it through. Well i had my doubts but you know that old saying “u learn something new every day” that’s true. Maybe not every single day, but most, and that day I sure did. Worked just like he said it would. BTW my son is also a great finish carpenter just like his uncle Thom. So then we put the strips through the planer and routed the two corners on one side of each strip. See how nice they look? Power tools are truly cool. Another shout out to Thom and Aaron!! Yay!