By Frank Ross
From stem to stern, this wood, canvas and brass beauty is stunning.
For Jerry Fruetel his recently completed canoe project was a labor of love with a long courtship. Jerry built the mold and began the project 18 years ago, and just took it on its maiden voyage this past month. “I’m like that wine company with the ad campaign that said, ‘We’ll serve no wine before its time’ but for me I serve no canoe before its time,” he said with a laugh.
“This was my first canoe and I wanted to take my time and not make any fatal errors,” he said. That fatal error almost happened, but cooler heads and hot water prevailed. After the ribs and planks had been attached, Jerry had to take a break for a couple of months. He set the canoe upright on saw horses but the cedar was so soft that the weight created a 1” dent in each end. “I thought I had ruined it, but I called a master canoe builder for advice.
Once the ribs are steamed and nailed to the gunwales, it looks like the ribs of a whale.
The solution was to create some temporary bracing to push the wood back out and pour buckets of boiling water over the damaged wood. When the wood dried out, the dents had come out and I was very relieved,” he said.
The first step to building a wood and canvas canoe is building the mold, which is essentially like another canoe, with the exception that it weighs about 300 pounds. The project lived in his garage and he worked on it when he had time off from his career with Blue Cross and Blue Shield in Minnesota.
Once he retired six years ago, the pace of the work became more regular and meaningful as well.
The mold is made of ¾” square strips of pine. Jerry explains the process that starts with attaching the inside gunwales, or rails, to the mold. Then 52 cedar ribs are steamed, bent over the mold, and the ends are nailed to the gunwales of the canoe. The result looks much like the skeleton of a whale.
Only brass could protect this beauty!
Once the ribs are in place, cedar planking is attached to the ribs to form the hull, and canvas is stretched over. The canvas is then sealed with a thick paint-like filler that hardens like slate. The final steps for most canoe builders would be adding the finishing touches with a quality marine paint and varnish, but Jerry wanted this canoe to be special. “I’ve got about 500 total hours in the project over all these years. I could have finished it sooner, but I did some inlay work. I inlaid the Canadian Maple Leaf in decorative cherry on one end and the American Eagle on the other,” he said.
The tools of the trade, and the results of their proper application.
In his native Minnesota there are many large boulders to be navigated around, and occasionally they can’t be avoided, so Jerry wanted to protect this beauty along the nose and tip of each end. “Some guys use copper for the end cap, and that’s a great metal to finish off a canoe, but I thought brass might offer more protection since it is a harder metal. I wanted to use 20 gauge, but I contacted Quick Ship Metals and got some good advice on which thickness to use, and learned about the annealing process. That’s where the metal is heated red hot and then cooled down. That makes it softer and much easier to bend and form. As you tap on it with a hammer to form it, the metal gets hard again. I used the 24 gauge brass sheeting. It was great to work with and really looks nice.”
Jerry loves the smell of wood and making sawdust, but the wood he loves the most is a paddle in his hands. “I know people who build canvas canoes that don’t care to paddle, but I love to take mine out. I had read about them being quiet and smooth. It is that for sure, but it’s also faster than I thought it would be and it really handles great.
Jerry takes his canoe for a turn on the Mississippi River.
“My ambition is to turn my love of working in wood and making canoes into a service to charities in our area. These canoes sell from $3,000 to $8,000 depending on how they’re finished out. I want to make 10 over the next few years and donate them to be used for charity fund raisers,” he said.
Based on the beauty of this brass appointed masterpiece, I’m betting the bidding will be brisk!
The decorative and protective uses for brass and copper are almost endless. If you’ve got a project that needs protecting, contact our customer service staff for answers to any questions you may have about these metals. The call is toll-free. 1-888-334-2177.
