I'm looking for design plans to build a miniature cedar strip or canvas canoe. Any ideas on where to look?

Try :

http://www.bearmountainboats.com/kits.asp

Dann

Lee Valley sells kits for two different models, a prospector and a canadiene. I think this link : http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.asp? ... ,250,43313
should take you there.

If you want to do it all yourself, you could take the table of offsets in the Canoecraft book (I'm assuming the current printing still has those, my old copy does) and simply change the scale. Find out more about the book, plans etc. at their web site
http://www.bearmountainboats.com/[/url]

Rolf's suggestion about scaling down from the plans in Canoecraft works - but you have to take a few other things into account. I built a 1/3 scale model from one of the plans there to figure out the whole stripper process as cheaply as possible - and to build a coffee table with a canoe underneath. Traditional sized strips DO NOT work, you need to scale the strips down in both width and thickness - some of the compound bends out at the ends were almost impossible without steaming. Even so, I gave up on keeping the strips aligned and started a new alignment for the football area since I wasn't going to paddle it anyway. My next problem was sanding - this is more like detail work since some of the curves are much sharper than a full size boat - the pop bottle / sandpaper trick doesn't work. But a full pop can with sandpaper does... basically you have to scale down some of the tools as well! The model isn't quite done yet - and won't be touched until after canoe season is over... I still need to put in seats, thwarts, gunnels and deckplates.

Just a question, Are you looking into building a model purely as a novilty and or due to space limitations, or are you thinking of building a model as practice for building a full scale canoe.

IMHO, building a model is in many ways more dificult than a full scale canoe and time wise there might be less difference than you think between a model and full scale. What you risk is material cost. the small model kits are about 100$, compaired to 500-800$ investment in materials for a full scale canoe.

Even if you produce a soso canoe you can paddle it for a while and sell it with little trouble for at very least the material cost or if nothing else do as I am contemplating, looking at the first canoe I built sitting in the barn not getting used, just cut it in half to make a set of book shelves.

If you want to keep the cost down limit yourself to a 12,14 or 15 footer, as the cost of wood goes up steeply if you require material over 16 feet in length.

Brian

To the original poster, if you really want a miniature fine, the sources mentioned will get you some options. But if you have the idea of building a miniature first for the experience before tackling a full size project, don't bother. It is almost as much work although somewhat cheaper to build a nice miniature. Just buy a book such as Canoecraft, take a course, ask questions or get the help of an experineced builder and go for it. It is not nearly as difficult to produce a fine boat as you might think. Just be very patient and make sure you understand what, how and why you are are about to do something BEFORE you do it. Jay