Tips Sail

Rib Shaping and Mistakes

The successfully bent ribs have been drying out and it was time to remove them and prepare to insert them into the canoe. To maintain their shape, the tops of the rib pairs were tied off and the each rib brace knocked out.


Rib tops tied off
It was at this point I notice a few, superficial mistakes made. To prevent the braces from excessively marking the soft cedar, I had cut some scrap cardboard to place over the rib. I ended up using a box that had blue ink on the face and some of this colour bled into the wet cedar. So a few ribs have a weird blue tinge to them. Also, I made a few mistakes by marking the bending point on some rib on the wrong face, so now there are some permanent ink marks these ribs too. These blemishes should easily come off with sanding.


Blue dye from cardboard; ink mark from initial marking
In the meantime, the cedar sheathing is soaking, so if all goes well, the final challenging part of inserting the ribs & sheathing will be over soon.