Hello, new here

Hi !! Welcome !! sure it will be very interesting to read your comments and we will all learn from you
best regards

Welcome, Ratatosk!

DIY ultralight canoe?  That would be interesting.

I’ve done some canoeing before.  Easier than carrying gear on my back.  I can bring beer.

Welcome! I’d enjoy seeing photos of your canoes. Please share!

Happy to, is there a way to @ a certain member to mention them in a thread?

They darken up some after a few months of UV exposure.

You can go @ratatosk but I don’t think notifications are enabled currently.

Those look really cool. I like how the transparent skin reveals the structure.

What are the materials? How much does a UL canoe weigh?

Welcome! Beautiful canoes! I sadly never combined my love of canoes and camping yet.

Im guessing your SOF tandem is just shy of 30lb? I like the pic with the tarp and canoe as a wind block

Thank you, they are steamed white oak mortised into pine/fir gunwales, lashed together with a synthetic sinew (basically very heavy dental floss) and a heavy ballistic nylon shell coated with a 2-part epoxy to make it waterproof. It’s surprisingly tough to get really fragile materials to end up in the shape you want; the current guru that I know of is a guy named Brian Schulz, who runs Cape Falcon Kayaks somewhere in Oregon.

I haven’t made any tandems, I like smaller solo boats, but my pack boats (12.5ft or so) weight 30-32 pounds, my longer boats (14.5ft or so) are around forty. I’ve never actually weighed the longer ones, just made sure i could carry them over my head. I’d rather add five pounds and have a boat I can bash into a rock, if I need to, rather than keep the weight off and have to babysit it. I paddled one of the bigger boats above 220 miles down the James river one time; it ran into a rock or twelve on that trip and I patched a few drip-leaks but am very confident in the materials now.

I’ve seen +/-30lb full-size skin-on-frames, and talked to people who’ve built them, and I get the feeling that they just don’t behave in a very canoe-y way.

I remember seeing a video about Brian Shulz from a few years ago that I thought was interesting

Off-grid, handcrafted life on Oregon farm & workshop .