Bob Easton

Coamings are boards that extend above the deck and serve to keep water from splashing into the boat. Hey, we could have built a completely open canoe, no decks, no coamings. But, this was more fun. No, I won’t actually go camping where the deck and coaming would be helpful, but I might go paddling on cool days and not want to sit in a puddle of cold water.

My coamings are made of cherry, to provide a little visual contrast when finished bright. Right inside the point where they meet, a trim piece is added for stiffening. It’s a nice exercise in fitting angles.

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There are six parts to the deck. Along each side is a covering board, long and constant width, following the line of the sheer. On the ends, slightly overlapping the covering boards are deck pieces, 2 at each end. Everything meets neatly in the middle.

Here is where we depart from the drawings. Somewhere “back when” I created a curve for the sheer clamp that differs from the drawings enough to make the pattern for the covering boards a misfit.

Resolve this by laying a piece of paper over the boat and making a tracing by lightly using the side of a pencil’s lead. (The same as tracing grave stones.)

Measure once cut twice. After all the careful pattern making, I made at least one board too short. The penalty, go back to milling.

 

 

I’ve mentioned a couple of times that this stuff is really thin, especially when we get to these boards which are 3/16 in thick (1:1). Merrily sanding along with a sanding stick, it’s all to easy to catch the end of the piece. If you’re lucky it gives you a good scare by how it bows and quickly snaps back. If not lucky, … it’s back to the mill.

Eventually, the covering boards get completed.

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All of the deck framing for this boat runs fore and  aft. The parts are therefore called carlins. The first carlins are short, running between the stems and bulkheads.

Once the short carlins are secure, the longer ones fit in notches in the bulkheads, a notch in the mid-frame, and end abutted to the short carlins. Through the middle section of the boat, these carlins define the edge of the decking.

Fitting them in place was a bit fussy.  On the 1:1 version, there are all sorts of clamps that might be used. Not so at this scale. I ended up devising a clamp made up of a short board with notches in each side. Wedging the board between clamp and carlin did the trick.

We can see the painted watertight compartment in this picture.

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