Building the Peace Canoe, Part 1

all it a canoe, a pirogue, a bateau, or whatever you like. The Peace Canoe is good basic transportation that you can build in a weekend. However, with its appealing shape, it won’t look like you built it in a weekend. The Peace Canoe is intended for first-time builders working on a limited budget and on a timeline. The hull is engineered for locally sourced materials and is held together with polyurethane adhesives dispensed from a caulking gun. You won’t need to mix epoxy or anything toxic and it’s unlikely that you’ll need to order anything but the bronze ring nails. Anyone from a troop of enterprising Scouts to a fisherman with a nearby lake to explore will appreciate the ease and economy of build. With a payload of over 600 lbs, this hull will absorb a family of four and a good-sized picnic lunch. This canoe is best suited to sheltered waters; I don’t want to read about any attempted Atlantic crossings. If you’re after a bulletproof hull for sliding over oyster shells, you can fiberglass the bottom. But if you use simply decent plywood and keep after the paint, your Peace Canoe will last a long time. The construction sequence has you prefabricating side panels, bottom panels, and seats as subassemblies—a “kit” of parts, as it were—-then bringing them all together in one exciting step. If you’re patient with your measurements and with the subassemblies, the hull will leap together without any wrestling. I built the first hull solo but there are a lot of steps that benefit from a patient helper. You’ll need five sheets of 1⁄4" plywood. If you can, splurge on the marine stuff. It’s money well spent in terms of strength and longevity, and it’s lovely to work with. AB or AC exterior fir is the next choice; I built the first 15 Peace Canoes out of that and they were sturdy and durable. For a more disposable boat, there are lesser grades but be sure you’re actually using 1⁄4"-thick material. The stringers and seat supports should be cut from clear softwood. Spruce, pine, or fir are good bets here in North America and if you look beyond the home center you can find it free of knots larger than a pencil eraser. If you have a choice between long lengths with knots, twists, and windshakes, and short lengths that are clear and sound, don’t be afraid to scarf together the short bits. I once made some dinghy masts out of a pile of 4'-long Sitka scraps, using about five scarfs per mast. They’re still going