This cedar canoe drawing is taken from Edwin Adney and Howard Chapelle’s The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America–it appears on page 79. Adney surveyed the original in 1895. He notes that the boat shows moderate sheer and low ends.

For this set of free plans, I left the station shape and stem shape alone, and I modified the rocker and sheer. The original drawing shows the canoe with little to no rocker–I prefer a canoe that has some rocker–so I added a similar amount of rocker as seen in Prospector canoes. When I changed the rocker, I changed the sheerline, because I felt the additional rocker justified the appearance of a showy sheer. The end result looks classy.

Linesplan

Length: 17 feet
Width: 36 inches
Draft at 600 pounds: 5 inches
Optimum capacity: 300-700lbs
Elevator Pitch: The Modern Malecite St. John River canoe, originally built in birch bark in 1895, is a classic symmetrical canoe with moderate load capacity. Its rockered hull ensures easy turning without adversely affecting tracking. The tumblehome keeps the sides of the canoe close to the paddler for an easy reach into the water. Canoeists looking for a classic, cabin canoe or light-duty, symmetrical tripper will enjoy this design.

Free Canoe Plan Downloads

I’m providing the free cedar canoe plans as a pdf (free Adobe Reader required to view) linesplan, which is printable on a letter-sized piece of paper; print this out for reference during the build. For building this wooden boat, I’m providing an A1-sized pdf of full-sized stations. This can be printed full-sized at many photocopy stores–no lofting required. I set the station intervals at one foot. For each station, I show lines to the outside of the canoe and for 3/16″ cedar strips. For builders who like a hardwood stem, I also included a 1.5-inch offset for the stem. For information on how to build a canoe from the free plans, see the book list below.

• Free Modern Malecite Canoe Linesplan [975 KB]
• Free Station Plans [1.42 MB]

Builders

• Stefano Fasi’s builder’s log. Maybe the first one on the planet in over 100 years?

Donate

If you build this canoe, consider donating $30 for my time and effort. Donate other amounts by pressing the Buy Me a Beer button located at the end of the article. Any donations are appreciated.

Whether or not you donate, please, send me a picture of your build–I’ll add it to a builder’s gallery.

Recommended Books to Buy Before Building

• Canoecraft: An Illustrated Guide to Fine Woodstrip Construction: The gold standard for cedar canoe builders. Use this book with the provided free plans and you’ll end up with a great canoe.
• Building a Strip Canoe by Gil Gilpatrick: A great cedar canoe building book that explains excellent shortcuts.
• Strip Built Canoe: How to build a beautiful, lightweight, cedar strip canoe: Well written and easy to follow. Every builder should own this.
• Canoe Paddles: A Complete Guide to Making Your Own: Paddle building techniques included with canoe and kayak building books are typically crude. Follow the directions in this book and end up with a beautiful and functional paddle to go along with your canoe or kayak.
• Building Strip-Planked Boats: The newest book by kayak and canoe building authority, Nick Schade. A must have.
• The Strip-Built Sea Kayak: Three Rugged, Beautiful Boats You Can Build: The gold standard of kayak building books. Clearly explains all the sets of boat building from tools to epoxy work. There are so many tricks and tips in this book that you’ll be able to save time.
• Kayakcraft: Fine Woodstrip Kayak Construction: Presents a slightly different way to build cedar strip kayaks. Lots of great ideas.
• The New Kayak Shop: More Elegant Wooden Kayaks Anyone Can Build: If stitch and glue is your thing, then this is the book to get.

Historical Pictures of Canoes Built on the St. John River

J.J. Kelley and Josh Thomas built a couple of plywood kayaks. Then they paddled from Alaska to Seattle via the Inside Passage in the plywood kayaks that they built. During the trip, they filmed everything. After the trip, they whittled all the footage down to an 80-minute movie. Everyone from Paddler Magazine to Outside Online is raving about this new movie. You’ll see why after watching the trailer.

Paddle to Seattle

What intrigues me is that they took the time to build their own kayaks, invested the extra work into filming the movie, they got sponsorships, but they come across as just a couple of guys on an adventure. They seem very humble. For me it’s a fresh change from recent paddling movies, like Jon Bowermaster Ocean 8 series–it seemed overdone and preachy to me.

Although Thomas and Kelley have fantastic filming and editing skills, they make the movie seem like it’s something that anyone could do. To me that’s much more inspiring than watching a paddling film that looks professionally produced. The film is screening in select locations, including Minneapolis on Dec 6th, 2009.

Don’t miss this film.

Pedal to the Midnight Sun

It’s not the first time the team filmed their adventures. In 2006, Thomas and Kelley completed a 1,200-mile bike ride across Alaska. They made a movie about that bike ride. Pedal to the Midnight Sun is available on Amazon.com

• The team’s website: Dudes on Media
  
• More Inside Passage Action: Check out Dave Freeman and Amy Voytilla’s North American Odyssey.

The end of 2009 approaches and the holidays are almost upon us. This means it’s time to start thinking about holiday gift ideas for the canoeist and kayakers in the family. This year, I’ve used and fell in love with a bunch of gear. Some of the gear I’ve fallen in love with appears on this year’s list. I think most paddlers would enjoy seeing these items under their Christmas or holiday tree, and I expect they’d fall in love with the gifts too.

• Sea Kayak With Gordon Brown DVD: Two years ago I got Gordon Brown’s book, Sea Kayak: A Manual for Intermediate and Advanced Sea Kayakers, as a gift and I find it fantastic. This year, for the holidays, the video companion to the book will become available. The producers made this instructional video with an unique angle; they filmed half as an instructional title and half as a group of kayak on a wilderness trip who have to put into practice what they learned from the instruction. I’ve only seen the clips on the website, but if the DVD is half a good as the book, it’ll be a winner. I hope I find this under my Christmas canoe paddle tree.
• Sea To Summit Lightweight Dry Bags: Sea to Summit sent me a few of these to test out, and, although, I’ve been a Sealline lover for years, I’m switching over to all Sea to Summit. These light bags are more flexible than a standard Sealline bag; this flexibility makes them easier to pack. I found the 13 liter size to be the most useful.
• Enertia Single Serve Camping Meals: Cheap, easy to make, and tasty. That sums up the perfect trail food for me. I’ve been using Enertia Trail Foods on my trips for the last seven or eight years. They’re all good, but Moosilauke Goulash is my favorite. I like these so much that I asked them to sponsor my last expedition and they did.
• The Complete Wilderness Paddler: This year, I won this book from Adventure Canoe on Twitter, and this is the first time I read it. It’s been an enjoyable read that any paddler would like to find under the tree. It’s almost as good as Expedition Canoeing, 20th Anniversary Edition: A Guide to Canoeing Wild Rivers in North America.
• Jetboil Cooking System: Jetboil game me a stove to use on my last expedition, and it impressed me. It impressed me because it’s so efficient. Each small canister lasted easily over two weeks of meals, which on a long trip meant carrying a lot less fuel. When done eating, the stove and fuel canister pack perfectly inside the pot for a compact carry. Plus, the system weighs under a pound. It’s not the lightest stove system on the market, but the simplicity and smart design won me over.
• North Water Sea Tec Towline: Paddling safety has been on my mind this year. I’ve read a number of reports, newspaper articles, etc. about paddlers getting into trouble and having to be rescued. It’s hard to pull off a kayak rescue with an injured paddler without a tow rope. And the North Water Sea Tec Towline is the smartest tow on the market, because it doubles both as a waist belt tow system and a deck mounted tow system. It’d be more than perfect if it tripled as a throw bag too.
• Katadyn Hiker PRO Water Filter: I purchased my first water filter–a PUR Hiker–in 1996. It pumped water quickly, required no maintenance, and weighed only 11 ounces. Over the years I experimented with many different systems, but this year I went back to my old PUR Hiker. Now made by Katadyn, the Hiker has seen a few upgrades: it includes a cleanable filter protector, quick attachment fittings for the hoses, and an improved pre-filter. It pumps just as fast as the old PUR Hiker, which means a liter of water in about 30 or so strokes.
• Gränsfors Bruks Mini Hatchet Axe: A hatchet is the perfect gift for the canoeist heading to the BWCA. This one weighs under a pound, fits into a small corner of your Duluth Pack, and splits wood with the best of them. Your canoeist will never be without a campfire again. Don’t want to spend over $100 on an axe that’ll last a lifetime, then try a Fiskars Hatchet
• An REI Membership: REI is a retail co-op devoted to selling great gear. As a member, you get cash back at the end of the year in the form of a dividend. A membership also gets you exclusive member-only deals and coupons. I love the 20% off coupon that comes with the year-end dividend and once a season.
• Garmin eTrex Vista: I bought this gem of a GPS and love it. With lithium batteries, I get about a week of all-day long battery life. It’s expandable via mini-sd cards, and you can get free topo maps for this Garmin gps.

Nessmuking.com began as a place to distribute my wilderness philosophy, show off my kayak and canoe building logs, provide boat information, and get my free canoe and kayak plans online. Since it’s inception, Nessmuking.com grew far bigger than I expected, and the most popular articles on the site have consistently been about boat building. For new visitors there are a daunting number of articles on canoe and kayak building, so this post is written with you in mind. Builders and paddlers who’ve visited before may find many of these resources new and interesting as well.

If you have an idea, tip, or article about kayak or canoe building, please, consider submitting.

Free Canoe and Kayak Plans

There are a number of free canoe and kayak plans on the website. Some have been built and prototyped and some are just drawings. A number of them were designed using Hulls, and you’ll need a copy of Hulls to view them. I designed the new boats with Delftship, so you’ll need a copy of Delftship or Free!ship to view the plans. The more popular boats include pdf and dxf files for people who don’t want to learn a new boat design program. Glen Smith offers a few kayaks here; they were designed with KayakFoundry, and you’ll need a copy to view them.

Both Glen and I ask for donations from people who build a kayak from our drawings.

Cedar Strip Kayaks

• Siskiwit Bay Kayak: A 17-foot British-style touring kayak with great looks. I prototyped this kayak, fell in love with it, but ended up selling my prototype to a friend who loved it even more. A number of builders who I only know through the Internet have labored away building their versions of it.
• The Iggy: A 16+ foot Greenland-style kayak. Based off of the boat that the Valley Anas Acuta was based off. I kept the hull the same as the original and included a modern deck. I think this kayak is good for paddlers up to 160 pounds.
• Glen Smith’s Kayaks: Glen’s kayaks range from 14’6″ to 17’6″. The designs are gorgeous and judging by the page rank they are popular. Worth checking out.

Plywood or Skin Kayaks

I’ve drawn up only a few plywood kayaks, but only built one of them. If you enjoy working in marine plywood, these drawings may offer just the kayak you’re looking for.

• Goodnow Kayak: A very low volume Greenland kayak. It’s been built in skin-on-frame and plywood. Search the archives at Qajaq USA for more info.
• Siskiwit Bay Multi-chine: A plywood version of my cedar strip kayak. As far as I know, it’s never been built.
• Aleutian Baidarka Kayak: MAE593-76. It was originally collected by I.G. Voznesenskii in 1845 on Akun Island in the Aleutian Islands.

Old and Unsupported Drawings

You can find drawings of a few old kayaks and canoes on the page showing the boats I built back in the day. Some of these have been built, but most haven’t. The Viking boat was built in a reduced form by someone from the Viking Boat mailing list. I don’t like most of these old drawings, so I don’t really support them anymore. A new drawing of the Viking ship is in the works.

Required Programs

Download these to view the drawings.

• Hulls
• Delftship
• Adobe Reader
• QCAD
• KayakFoundry

How to Build and Do It Yourself Articles

Nessmuking.com published many how to build articles in the Do It Yourself catagory. Some of these articles were written by me, but most were written by guest authors. I’ve really enjoyed having guest bloggers/authors post their articles on this website, and I think you’ll find these articles informative.

• Nessmuking and Stitch and Glue Boat Building: Tom Gerd owner of Finewoodwatercraft.com and builder of beautiful plywood canoes and kayaks wrote an article about making quality lightweight plywood boats.
• Light but Strong – Building Cedar Strip Canoes for Wilderness Tripping: Jay Morrison has used his lightweight homebuilt canoes to paddle across Canada. They’re light and tough and he tells you how he does it.
• The Simplest of Seats: Richard Hayes writes about a simple seat that he likes to use in his homebuilt kayaks.
• Building a Kayak Paddle – A La Volkskayak: In a second article for Nessmuking, Richard Hayes tells you how to build a nice inexpensive kayak paddle.
• Easy Aluminum Fittings For a Sailing Canoe: Charles E. Campbell writes about how he made homemade custom fittings for a sailing canoe that he designed and built.
• Wigeon: A Sailing Canoe: Charles E. Campbell writes about how he designed and built a modern sailing canoe.
• Review: A Comparison of System Three MetlWeld and WEST System for Metal Bonding: Just like it sounds. In a third article for Nessmuking.com Charles E. Campbell does a comparison for products that can be used in boat building.
• Vacuum Bagging Techniques for Canoes and Kayaks: If you want to build a lightweight composite canoe or kayak, vacuum bagging is one way to do it. Aaron Miller describes the process and gives good advice while doing it.
• How To Make Woven Rope Carrying Handles: Pedro Almeida shows you how to make a really cool handle for your kayak.
• A Paddle with a Twist: How to make a one piece feather wooden and carbon kayak paddle.
• How to Make a Fiberglass Skeg: My first experiment with building and retrofitting a fiberglass skeg into a wooden kayak.

Builder’s Logs

I wrote builder’s logs for three of my kayak builds. You’ll find interesting techniques, like how to use rubber hatches, how to build recessed carbon fittings, and how to build a skeg among these articles.

Siskiwit Bay

• Building a Perfect Kayak: My Adventure in Kayak Design and Cedar Strip Building
• Building a Perfect Kayak: Part Two
• Building a Perfect Kayak: Part Three
• Building a Perfect Kayak: Part Four
• Building a Perfect Kayak: Part Five
• Building a Perfect Kayak: Part Six
• Building a Perfect Kayak: Part Seven
• Building a Perfect Kayak: Part Eight
• Building a Perfect Kayak: Part Nine
• Building a Perfect Kayak: Part Ten
• Building a Perfect Kayak: Part Eleven
• Siskiwit Bay: The Initial Test
• The Second Test Run of the Siskiwit Bay Design
• How long does it take to build a cedar kayak?

Nikumi

A clear vinyl skinned skin-on-frame designed by Tom Yost.

• Building a Nikumi

The Iggy

On this build I incorporate all the builder tricks that I’ve accumulated through the years. With the dyed wood, it is beautiful. I’ll never go back to kayaks without stains again.

• Building Ken Taylor 1959 Kayak – the Igdlorssuit
• Building the Ken Taylor Igdlorssuit Kayak: Gathering supplies, drawing the plans, making strips, cutting forms and strongback, stripping the hull, trim sheer, stems, pull staples, block plane, sand, wet-out, dye, glass hull, remove hull
• Building Ken Taylor 1959 Kayak – the Igdlorssuit – Part Three: Fair inside, glass inside, inside forms, strip deck, coaming recess, finish outside, sand inside, glass football, fill coats, composite hatch recesses
• Building Ken Taylor 1959 Kayak – the Igdlorssuit – Part Four: Cockpit coaming, carbon recessed deck fittings, skeg box and blade
• Building Ken Taylor 1959 Kayak – the Igdlorssuit – Part Five: Skeg control box, inside seams, final sand, outside seams, keel strip, bulkheads
• Building Ken Taylor 1959 Kayak-the Igdlorssuit – Launching
• Building Ken Taylor 1959 Kayak – the Igdlorssuit – Launching – Susie Islands

Recommended Books to Buy Before Building

• Building Strip-Planked Boats: The newest book by kayak building authority, Nick Schade. A must have.
• The Strip-Built Sea Kayak: Three Rugged, Beautiful Boats You Can Build: The gold standard of kayak building books. Clearly explains all the sets of boat building from tools to epoxy work. There are so many tricks and tips in this book that you’ll be able to save time.
• Kayakcraft: Fine Woodstrip Kayak Construction: Presents a slightly different way to build cedar strip kayaks. Lots of great ideas.
• The New Kayak Shop: More Elegant Wooden Kayaks Anyone Can Build: If stitch and glue is your thing, then this is the book to get.

IKEA tote bags revolutionized (if revolution is simply change) the way I carry gear to and from my kayak. In the past, I’d grab a couple or three dry bags, carry them up the beach to the tent, drop, and repeat, but since my trip to Norway last year, where I discovered IKEA tote bags being used by the folks we kayaked with, I’ve been using these lightweight and compact bags to store my gear, carry my gear from the car to the beach, and to carry from the kayak to camp. At IKEA stores, they cost $0.59, but without a nearby IKEA, Amazon is the only option.

About the Bags

These bags weigh under three ounces, light for something that carries 19 gallons, and easily carry over 20 pounds. They come with two sets of handles: one for carrying by hand and a longer one for carrying over the shoulder. The blue polypropylene material takes a beating and keeps on going. It doesn’t soak up water and is easy to clean. When folded, the bags easily fit up into the ends of the boats where nothing else fits, or to keep one handy, little room is lost when keeping one in the day hatch. They’re so handy that we’ve been using them around our house for shopping.

A downside: In early 2009, Danish, kayak blogger, and tote userHelge Helligsøe (translated to English) wrote about how prevalent the totes are becoming. After the first day of a kayaking course, he reached into his bag looking for a change of clothing and out came an unexpected piece of women’s clothing. Apparently, the women instructors also used IKEA totes for gear, and the blue bag that he thought was his was actually one of the instructors.