Peninsula Shores school builds a canoe! SLIDESHOW

Full-size molds being cut-out

I thought i would attach a picture of the full-size stations.  We are using MDF - mostly for cost reasons and local availability.  It machines well but required good dust collection.  The CNC router allows us to do many operations in one - here it cuts the pockets for the clamps in the stem mold.  We are using a 1/2" straight-bit to cut everything out.

I will post some pics of the students and our progress as of late.

cheers,

MJK

Cutting out the stations

We've progressed quite a bit since my first post.  We have since cut out all the station molds, built the mini-nomad strongback and set-up the mold stations.  We are in the process of attaching the full-size mold stations and are about to bend & laminate the stems on the mini-nomad.   Above is the picture of our cnc-router cutting out the mold stations for the 1/3rd scale Nomad.  It worked well.  If you look closely you will notice we have added centre-lines to the mold stations.  As we were drawing up the CAD files, i thought it would aid set-up to have a line engraved into the mold indicating the centreline (perpendicular to the baseline).

The Nomad - 2009 School canoe build

Now that we have finally produced some canoe-looking items to tell you about, i thought i would record our progress... my first blog!

Some history and background first.  I am the technology teacher at Peninsula Shores District School, in Wiarton, Ontario, Canada.   In early 2008 i proposed that we build a school canoe - both for supporting an environmental / outdoor education program at the school,  to build character and ownership of our students surroundings and improve the aesthetics of our new building.  In late 2008 we received funding to build  a cedar stripper canoe for the school.

This is my first canoe, and my experience is in the precision realm of things  - so i choose an established design from Bear Mountain boats - a 17' Nomad.  This also allowed me to follow the instructions as laid out in the book "Canoecraft" by Ted Moores.  I purchased most of the necessary supplies including the plans.

Upon receiving the plans and book, i set myself and some students at the project.  Our goal was simply to finish it within the 2008 - 2009 school year.

After finding a spot to stow our materials, we started with building the strongback.  This was a good exercise to truly explain how to achieve straightness and flatness.

In looking at the plans to make the mold stations, i decided to "make" them digital and cut them out with our CNC router.  This way we could maximize the use of materials easily, cut them out accurately, and not have to do any sanding or touch-ups.  That is, if our CAD drawings are done correctly.

We started by taking the plans and creating a grid reference system (on 1cm spacing), and plotted our offsets (x,y) from the baseline and centreline.  This was tedious work, and our excellent co-op student Luke Liverance did a great job and persevered.  Once the offsets were recorded, we simply drew points on our CAD software (SolidEdge in this case).  The curves were mirrored, some reference lines and text added - and viola a nice set of vectors for our CNC router to understand.

I then programmed the CNC portion to engrave the stations and reference lines first so-as to check that everything was in the right place, then cut-out the stations using a 1/2" router bit.

Before i did all that i was messing with the CNC program and decided to shrink a copy of the files down to 1/3rd the size.  This way i could check my stations using some scrap wood first.  In the end it turned out well, and we will now be making two canoes (actually, one and a third canoes) - the full-size, and the 1/3rd display model. 

I will try and attach some pics here.

I will try and keep updating the progress of the build as we go along.  

MJK