In this article we show you our tricks to build a canoe in strip construction without using staples. The construction of the wooden hull will be more time consuming, because you have to wait after each glued strip until the glue is dry, but the result is worth every effort! Our approach to building a canoe without staples is explained in the following article.
Tip #1 - Use leftover pieces of your strips
You can use short remnants of your concave and convex hull strips to hold the last glued strip to the mold. To do this, saw off a piece of strip about 5cm long and drill a hole in it. Now you can screw the piece to tha mold with a wood screw and a washer, like shown in the following picture.
Tip #2 - Tape
Between the molds, you can tape the strips to the last strip for glueing, where necessary. To do this, it's best to place a suitable round wood in the concave milling beforehand so that the tape doesn't damage the fragile edges. In the photo, you can also see the leftover pieces that are used to hold the last glued-on strip.
Tip #3 - Screws instead of staples
The disadvantage of staples is that they leave continuous lines of small holes that are very noticeable in the finished hull. Unfortunately, it is not possible to simply omit the staples without compensation, as the strips must somehow be kept on the molds. We've also seen approaches where the strips were glued to the molds from the inside with hot glue, but then the hull ends up being difficult to remove from the molds and the wood of the strips can tear out. Instead of using staples to hold each strip to the molds, we recommend that you use screws. To do this, we drill a small hole in the hull - only where necessary - and screw in as thin a screw as possible with a washer. Since screws hold more than staples, you will need far fewer of them, and the result will be a scattering of small holes that won't be noticeable later on the finished boat. After removing the screws, you can shrink the holes a little with a damp cloth and an iron, and then close them with a small wooden spike that you hammer into the hole. In the photo you can see how few screws we used:
The strip construction method produces beautiful wooden canoes. Also read our other boatbuilding tips in the blog!