I am buying this boat off of craigslist. One problem, no markings on it or they have been covered up. It is a 14ft fiberglass canoe, that is all the current owner knows. Any ideas out there?
http://portland.craigslist.org/mlt/boa/4476723222.html
good question, bad canoe
At first glane it looked aluminum because of the color but its obviously a 30 to 45 yr old fiberglass chopper-gun, keeled, low-end, heavy, budget canoe that probably cost about $300 NEW. There were MANY manufacturers of these type canoes back then. Generally speaking, for just a little more cash, you could get a much better used canoe that will be far better paddling. Unfortunately after living in the Pacific NW for 10 years, I know canoes are rare compared to kayaks.
Don’t buy it. It’s a crappy short canoe
with a keel.
Ugh
But it might be worth getting for the rarity of having “pleather” seats. Whatever the heck that is since canoes should have caned seats…
Pleather
Yes those amazing pleather seats could seal the deal.
Woven Roving
Sports fans I disagree with you on this one. Look closely in the one interior photo and you can see the pattern of the woven roving on the bottom of the hull in the shade of the seat. It has aluminum gunwales and some short cross-ribs. There is a definite depression on the interior of the keel. Not hallmarks of chopper gun canoes. The pleather seats are hung from aluminum plates and the stems are fairly sharp. This canoe is not wide for a 14’ hull. Look at the seat widths. Roll this hull upside down and see if the bottom flexes.
with it upright flex the ends in opposite directions and see if the gunwales move. If this weighs under 65# its not chopper glass. I expect it to weigh in the mid-50s. It might well be worth $300. What composite hull will you find in that area for less?
Bill
woven roving OK
Yes I did recognize the fabric pattern to be roving after closer inspection but have to disagree about sharp stems. Look at the upside down canoe photo. The stem looks like an early royalex boat. Pretty blunt. Anyway if considering the location being in kayak country, it wouldn’t be a big mistake if he could talk him down to maybe $250 just to get out and paddling until he finds a better canoe.
I can’t see woven roving. The woven
roving on our old Moore is far more prominent and obvious.
Of course there isn’t a sharp distinction between a coarser grade of round weave and woven roving. But if that’s woven roving, it’s a pretty fine grade.
Those little riblets are cute. Though what they do is not obvious.
holding the "keel " together?
I’m suspect too. It seems those ribblets are holding the shape of the “Keel” and preventing its spread… Which to me sends the question …how robust is that “keel”
I can think of many other ways to spend money. The lottery seems a lot more attractive, even though never buy tickets.
Sharp ends
I said fairly sharp ends. and that was in comparison to the typical 1970’s chopper gun canoe. They are blunt compared to a Minnesota II, but sharp compared to a Sears Fiberlite or a Dagger Legend. Of all the generic 14-16’ fiberglass tandems I have seen in my career, this falls above average.
The short ribs keep the keel and bottom stiff. Without them, the bottom will tend to flex upward under load and the top of the keel opening spreads apart. The ribs prevent the keel opening from acting like a hinge. Most chopper gun hulls would just fill in the keel. The fact that this one is open would suggest that material (coarse cloth or roving) was rolled into the keel. Much better than the ones with a wooden dowel embedded into a chopper gun hull.
The grey colored interior with the assorted color strands was usually painted over the fiberglass to keep strands of glass from the coarse material from getting into your feet. The first place this coating wears away revealing the coarse weave is under the seats. The first mohunk glass canoe I paddled as a Scout left glass in both my knees that itched for weeks. That and its weight left me a Grumman faithful for years.
Bill
I agree with plaidpaddler about the ribs
There will be a tendency for the hull to have more flex across the keel line for the simple reason that there's more "length of material" available for flexing than the actual straight-line distance across which the flexing occurs than would be the case if the keel were not there. If that reason is not clear, an extreme example of this same principle is a coil or spiral spring, where lots of flexing ability within a small space is created by making the spring have a convoluted shape (in that case, the amount of flex that occurs within the spring material along any section having the same straight-line span as the overall length of the spring itself would hardly be noticeable in comparison to what's possible due to the coiled or spiraled shape packing a lot more length into the same space).
As another way of thinking of this, imagine if the keel extended six inches below the main profile of the hull. In that case, there would be in excess of 12 inches of material who's cumulative flexing action would be occurring across just a two-inch span across the keel line. The extra flex that plaidpaddler refers to here is just a less-pronounced example of this principle, so yes, the ribs will help prevent the extra flexing that is made possible by the shape of the keel.
I'm not saying it's a good design, especially since I myself don't like keels, but plaidpaddler is correct about the principle here.
As far as the woven roving goes, one of the photos clearly shows, in one particular part of the boat, what looks like it could be part of a weave pattern. The pattern is not fine at all - it's very coarse. At a glance the marks look like they are the result of a weave pattern, but whether there might be some other reason for them to be there or not, I don't know. My only point is that the pattern is very coarse and it's very easy to see. Maybe you were looking at the wrong photo.
I looked at all the photos again, and
can’t see it. Either my LCD screen is suppressing the appearance of woven roving, or your screen is creating it. Overall, the inside of the canoe looks way too smooth to be woven roving like on our Moore.
Look at photo #3
When I look more closely, I'm even less certain about what the pattern might be, but it definitely is there. Look just in front of the seat but behind the location of wear from paddlers' feet, and also farther to the right (toward the front of the boat), almost at the edge of the screen, beyond the wear area from paddlers' feet. Also, though less in-focus than the other places, the lines can be seen on the vertical sides of the hull to the left of the wear area on the floor.
The lines run perpendicular to the axis of the boat and are spaced at less than one-quarter-inch intervals. Surely you can see them. Nothing about the idea that this is caused by my viewing screen makes any sense, especially when I've never seen any kind of screen superimpose a regular pattern of any kind onto a photo, and certainly not at selective locations and with an orientation that's diagonal to that of the screen.
Still, as I said before, I don't know what causes these lines to be there, and thinking about it now, I'm not sure the fact that they are not visible within high-wear areas supports the notion that this is texture of some kind of fabric, nor can I explain why they are only visible in one orientation and not two. I am only saying that there's no denying that the pattern of lines is there.
I looked again, and I do not see any
such line pattern on my screen. You are welcome to recruit others to inspect the pictures.
I also say that the overall pattern inside the boat is too smooth for woven roving to be present. Yeah, woven roving is often painted after layup to close little gaps that resin has not filled. But it leaves a prominent pattern at the surface.
I see woven roving
I definately see the fabric pattern on both my computer and tablet. Its there for sure. No big deal its still on old canoe that “Is what it is”
Could be a Klickitat?
Klickitat canoes used to be made in Portland until they went out of business around 1980. You still see them pop up for sale every once in a while. The ones I’ve seen had the curved ends like this, though usually there is a big Klickitat logo on the side. But that could have come off or been painted over.