ROWBOAT
CUSTOMIZE YOUR CANOE
Headwaters Canoes’ standard wood-canvas canoe construction can be customized to suit your personal interests, paddling ambitions and aesthetics. Starting with a basic foundation, we encourage you to consider custom options. We’re happy to guide you through all options to help you design the canoe of your dreams.
The Basics
Standard construction includes:
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white cedar ribs and sheeting (planking)
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white ash trim (decks, gunwales, seats, thwarts)
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straight centre thwart
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regular filler finished with enamel paint
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standard weight wood components
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seats are woven in durable nylon lacing in traditional babiche weave pattern
No.1 Grade canoes use the finest select wood...​
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No.2 Grade canoes utilize wood which has smaller...
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Bush Model is a nod to the working canoe in the...
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Canvas Colour
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Don’t feel restricted by the classic red or green canoe. Many colours are available depending on the type of canvas filler selected.
Butyrate Filler
Headwaters started using butyrate to fill and finish canvas-covered canoes over two decades ago. Extensive use shows that butyrate is a significant upgrade to standard wood-canvas canoe fillers, offering greater durability, ease of maintenance and significant weight savings compared to other options. It is available in a wide array of colours.
Ultralight Build
We can trim down components of the canoe, including gunwales, ribs and seats, to reduce overall weight. The ultralight option includes butyrate filler. This option can reduce the weight of a finished canoe by up to 10 pounds, depending on the model.
Cherry Trim Package
Cherry outer gunwales, decks, thwarts and seats add a unique look to your wood-canvas canoe and save weight over the standard ash trim. Choose the full cherry package or mix and match cherry trim components to customize the look of your new canoe.
Carrying Yoke
We can install a shaped carrying yoke instead of a straight centre thwart to improve your portaging comfort.
Variable Rib Spacing and Half Ribs
Adding ribs to a wood-canvas canoe increases its durability considerably. The Chestnut Canoe Company offered close-ribbed “Guide Special” models for heavy duty use. Borrowing from this concept, we introduced “variable rib spacing”—adding a few extra ribs in the mid-section of the canoe—to reinforce high-wear areas of the hull to minimize additional weight. Variable rib spacing is available for our 17-foot Prospector and 16- and 17-foot Cruisers.
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Early wood-canvas canoe builders in Maine added half-ribs on the floor of the canoe to increase durability. Our partnerships with Ontario summer camps has shown the value of half-ribs in reinforcing the hull of hard working canoes. Half-ribs also add a unique look to a wood-canvas canoe with only a modest weight increase.
Keel
A keel is standard on the Bobs Special and 18' Prospector V-Stern. We normally do not install keels on other models, however, at the customer's request we can install a keel on any canoe.