Welcome to Furniture Handmade. The Furniture Handmade website is my woodwork shop. I love to work with wood to design and manufacture furniture such as wardrobe, tallboy, wardrobes, chest of drawers, dinning room table, kitchen cabinets, bedside cabinets and louvre doors, Welsh Dresser, blanket box, toy box and also I make fuselage canoes, all are made from sustainable wood or recycled material. I also make stained glass windows, to incorporate into my designs.

Stonefly Canoe.

How I made it, blow by blow.

Click image to enlarge them.

The strong back was constructed from 3 5.2m 2" x 4" bolted together.
Oh by the way my workshop is my garage which is 5.2m x 2.5m but useable space 1.8m.

Drawing the frames from the offset tables is not as hard as you may think. For help go to www.flutterbyfoto.com/ and kayak Diary link.

I then stuck my frame drawings to card and cut them out.

This is my home made band saw, as you can see it is a jigsaw mounted on a plate, that fits in my router table.

Oh on a health and safety note. Do not do this at home kids as there is no safety guard.

I have now bought a bandsaw. A Record BS300E Premium 12" Bandsaw

I rough cut out the frames.

After that I cut them.

These are the four blocks, when cut out will hold the four main frame in the right location.

A 12" by 1" and 5.2m Cornish Cedar from Duchy Timber at Lostwithiel Duchy Timber Limited.

I cut this plank down to 16mm x 16mm, 16mm x 25mm and 16mm x 37mm.

My table saw jig, to cut my stringers at a sharp angle, to give the greatest surface area for the glue (Titebond 3) known as a Scarf joint. I think it is about 8 degrees.

If your are smart you will notice that the timber size is not a stringer, it is a picture of the outer gunwale as I forgot to take a picture of the stringer joint, but you can see the shallow angle.

Stick with water proof glue Titebond 3.

Set up the four key frames, they must be level and square.

Put in the stringers.

In fill the other frames.

Put a temporary thwarts in to keep the frame from breaking.

You must file and or rasp, to make the stringer fit without due pressure.

Hold it all together with bungee's and then lash all the stringers to the frames.

Tie it all together with nylon string.

Stick with Titebond 3 and hold the outer gunwale.

Clamp city.

I had to stick 31 spacers blocks to the outer gunwale, just look at all those clamps.

One inner gunwale stuck, it was a two man job I was clamping and my daughter wasgluing.

And the the other inner gunwale.

Looking good.

The planking.

Make breast hook.

Stick the breast hook on the bow and the stern.

Lashing the planking down.

Sorry this image is poor, click on it and it is a little better. The sketch comes from www.pdxtex.com/canoe/
yokedetail.htm

The board is 1" by 6"

What else are outside dinning chairs supposed to be used for.

Good the suns out I can coat the frame with Chestnut Tung oil. I bought it form www.axminster.co.uk.

The material is Dacron, is Polyethylene, which will shrink heated by the iron. The Dacron I bought from www.profabrics.co.uk. I eMail them as they did not have it on there site, they got it in for me.

How can I staple the edge of the Dacron to the outer gunwale with my eyes shut.

Hey I do like the odd stitch in the Sun.

A quick trim.

And a twist, a tuck and a over stitch.

Voilà finished.

Oh I forgot that a boat has two ends.

Here we go again.

Oh it must be a bad day with a face like that. I do not know why, as I like ironing, especially watching a film on TV, that's it! there is no TV in the garden.

If looks could iron or heat shrink then it would have been done in seconds. I found that as the evening dampness came in the Dacron was shrinking better.

I used yacht varnish to seal it, I read that you should paint the sealant coats in different direction (a long, up and down and at an angle), so that is what I have done.

The weather men can not get the weather right, they said it would not rain but hey ho it did and left ringlets all over.

Looks good, but my daughter would like it painted mauve.

Why does it always rain in Cornwall, when you need to get out and put some paint on. All I need is five days of dry weather to finish this canoe, but no it sends me 90 mile/hour winds and rain. The canoe is stored out side on two home made trestle as I have not got the room in my garage to paint it. So I had to lightly lash it down, lucky my garden is sheltered by a big fence plus a 3 meter tree hedge also my garden is made up of terraces, oh and my garage.

The last of the under coat paint. Four more days three for paint and one to fix the outer gunwale rub rail.