Hi John,

The article is more about the method. Offered as a public service.

The plans I used are in the back of the book “Rushton and his Times in American Canoeing”.

There is some controversy about whether the offsets shown there are the original Wee Lassie offsets. But I can only say they make for a very pretty boat. The voluptuous shape does make for an “interesting” plank layout as the girth is so different from the height of the ends. So it is likely that two strip plank orientations will be needed (which I think I covered in the article.

When there are doubts about fairness I take a quick and dirty method with strip planked boats. Set up the moulds and run a batten over the moulds. Plane down the high spots and mark any low spots with a dark marker on the mould controlling faces. When bevelling the moulds. some of those low points can be supported by the non controlling side.

Then the strip plank can still be nailed to the mould but not hammered down to the mould but eyeballed to look nice and fair. It works pretty well. It has even allowed me to scale up quite large boats from tiny drawings in old magazines and books.

Hope that helps

Michael

The balso building method can be applied to any of the classic canoes that offsets are available for. The same book has the offsets

I was wondering what formers/offsets you used to build this canoe? I can’t find a matching set of plans on your site.