I’ve made and restored
many wood framed canoe seats. I have a hollow chisel mortising setup for my drill press and a tenoning jig for my table saw but the all the commercially made seat frames I’ve worked on are double doweled. I use 2" polyester webbing and 3/8" stainless steel staples purchased from McMaster-Carr.
I enjoy restoring weather abused canoes. If the seat frames are salvageable I usually remove the cane and what cane spine I can from the frame and turn the frame up side down. The old spline groove is well hidden by the webbing.
Hope this info helps.
thanks everyone
for the excellent suggestions.
It’s funny, when a person wants to try
something simpler, seeing if a new adhesive will make a simple joint last, he keeps getting told how it’s not so hard to do other joints even though every party to the discussion knows that the other joints take more time and work.
I need one seat. I plan to use lap joints and G-flex. If I fail, I will humbly return and report.
As a side note, I’ve done dovetails by hand, and they are the standard for drawers, but I have kitchen drawers made in the 50s with butt joints backed by nails and not one drawer has ever failed. Go figure.
Well, I did say…
…it’s worth a try. Given the requirements, I still think so.