Boat Building Forum

Find advice on all aspects of building your own kayak, canoe or any lightweight boats

Hi,

I recently discovered foldable canoes (watching a Larrs Monson program) and immediately wanted one for camping and fishing trips. When I saw the price I wished I never discovered them. Then I found Tom Yosts site and thought I would look into building one.

For the last couple of weeks I have been putting some ideas together and thought I would post it on a few message boards to get some feedback before I finalized the plans and bought the materials. The yostwerks site is fantastic, there are loads of great ideas and techniques for building kayaks which I will try to apply to this canoe.

I haven't been in a canoe for 5 years (and that was only for a couple of hours) although I do fish in a rowing boat fairly often (what I can draw from that i don't know...). On top of that I've never built anything like this before either (I do get the feeling I'm diving off the high-board into the deep end) so I've tried to keep it simple (largely) with a beginner canoeist in mind. To make matters worse I live in the UK so I couldn't even use the Yostwerks links for my materials and have had to source them from elsewhere.

Basically it will be a 4m aluminum frame with HDPE cross sections, Inflatable sponsons in the flanks, and a 18oz. (HH-66 glued) PVC hull.

I would appreciate any feedback on my plans (which are attached to this post). I have a few questions too that I have struggled to find good answers for, like:
1.) Is there an easy way to work out the Gunwale length (before it is bent) or is it a case of trial, error and adjustment?
2.) Is the recommended load of the commercially available canoes dependent on the strength of the craft, overall buoyancy or a combination of the two?

Any help with those would be great too!
Thanks, Ben.