Canoe Mast Seat

Canoe Mast Seat

Here is a brief overview of how to make a canoe seat, this example uses a seat that includes a mast ring for a sailing canoe. The seat uses mortise and tenon construction. I use a stop on the sliding miter table of the saw to get a consistent initial cut of the tenons (Figure 2), then make multiple cuts along the length of the tenons on each side (the sliding miter table on this little Ryobi BT3000 table saw is quite handy for making the tenons this way). The final tenons can be cleaned up using a chisel or rasp. Mortises are drilled at the appropriate locations on the cross members and the holes are squared up and cleaned with a chisel.

Use a good quality waterproof wood glue to glue it all up using clamps, and a carpenters square to make sure all is square. The mast ring occurs on the rear of the front seat, with a ring that has an inside diameter of 2 inches. I cut the shape using a jig saw, and then use a drill hole saw to put in the "ring". The outside edges of the seat are beveled using a router with a ½" round over bit. The inside of the square of the seat and the mast ring are rounded over using a 1/4" round over bit

I hand cane my seats, but the method I use to finish the caning is the typical way used for finishing up machine woven cane. I use a 3/16 straight router bit, and a pin jig to route a groove into the top of the seat. The pin jig is simply made of a toilet bolt epoxied into the router table insert at the appropriate distance form the center of the router bit, I use ½ inch.

After routing the groove, I drill holes, 3/16 inch bit, evenly spaced at 5/8 inch intervals around the seat, making sure they line up across the seat and there is a hole in the center of each of the corners. The interval distance of the holes can be increased to get a wider spaced weave if desired.

Since the seat is to be hand caned, it is a good idea to relieve all sharp edges the cane will be exposed to, so all the holes on the bottom of the seat are beveled and I run sandpaper along the edges of the groove until they are all rounded. Before the seat can be caned, it should be varnished. I will not go into the process of how to do the actual caning, as most libraries will have a book on caning that would do a much better job of explaining the process than I could. Suffice it to say that caning up a seat is not difficult, though it can be time consuming.
After the seat has been caned, I finish it off in the manner of used for pre-woven cane. I use 3/16 inch reed spline. I put a thin layer of polyurethane glue along the groove, and push in the reed spline that has been soaked for the appropriate length of time to make it pliable. I use polyurethane wood glue because it is waterproof, and will adhere to materials that are moist. Another benefit of polyurethane wood glue is that after it is dried, it is not rock hard like epoxy, so when the time comes to re-cane, it hopefully will not be too difficult to gouge out the old reed spline. I usually give the cane a couple of coats of tung oil for protection. To see some more pictures of this seat in the canoe along with the sail rig see Hiawatha Canoe Rigged for Sailing