Purchasing a Used Canoe?

Grummans were made for a while also under the Marathon name when they temporarily lost permission to use the name. All of these companies also made aluminum canoes for other companies such as Sears. Heavy or light? As I mentioned, most manufactures made canoes in several different aluminum sheet thicknesses. .030, 040, .050 or .060-inch hull thickness. Multiple keel configurations were also made, flat, shallow and deep.
 
Well this thread is over a month old but I've been wandering around here for a couple days and this hit my sweet spot as I was in a similar boat (pun intended) over this past summer. I continued to see canoes on CL for what seemed very cheap. Being a camper from a young age and living in the Adirondacks all my life I figured, hey, why not grab a canoe? So I sent several emails to CL ads trying to find the best deal. After several Colemans and Grummans I came across a young man who was selling a "Yellow Old Town Canoe". I emailed and got a response and within a couple hours I was on my way to look at it. When I arrived it was still on his truck from his last outing in it. He explained that he previously used an inflatable boat with a small motor but it had deteriorated to an unusable degree. Coincidentally his girlfriend's uncle was moving into an assisted living home due to his age and health and had a canoe that he was going to throw away! This fella had the sense to grab it and call it a fortunate twist of fate! Well after being in stable flat bottom boats with motors he quickly found that a canoe with his girlfriend and their two dogs was not the best fit. I checked it out and for the sum of $150 I brought it home. As it turns out, if an Old Town canoe has a serial number of 210,000 or less, there is an organization that has EVERY single build sheet for those vintage Old Town canoes! Now, I love a bit of history! So my serial number was somewhere in the 18X,XXX's. I sent off an email and they sent me back a scan of the build sheet for MY canoe! As it turns out, what I had bought was an Old Town FG. Finished on June 16, 1971, being one of the first layered fiberglass canoes that Old Town made. It's a 16 foot beast weighing in at 87 lbs according to said build sheet with NO thwarts! This thing can haul some gear for camping, which was one of my original intents! It's heavy as all get out but it's durable and steady! It takes a good bit of paddling to make it go, and it tracks like a wet noodle requiring a keen set of paddlers to keep it straight on course but for my first boat and the price I paid? I couldn't be happier! This winter I plan to build a small cart for portaging and add some painter loops for easier dragging and lining and it should be a great boat for me for years to come. It's got some pretty good scratching in the gel coat but hey, it was $150! I'll also probably add some kevlar skid plates as well to make a great overnight boat that I can beat up a bit and not worry about. A friend and I took it on an overnight trip a month or so ago and it performed just as we expected.

Also, the build sheet states the original shipping address of the boat. Mine was shipped to a local dealer nearing the end of June 1971. Having heard the story that the previous owner told me, his girlfriend's uncle lives in the town that the canoe was original shipped to, so I would make the stretch that he may very well have been the original owner! So this boat was hand made in Maine, shipped to a town a mere 20 minutes from my home and spent it's entire life here! I love that!

So I got what I wanted for the price I wanted and I got a good bit of history to boot. I'm a happy canoeist.

Okay, I've rambled more than enough for my first post here. On with the discussion.
 
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Congrats on the find SignalFire! I think you will find that as your experience with the canoe progresses, it will track and glide better for you than it does now. Learning the paddle strokes and how to vary them makes a huge difference. And it is good that you are young enough that the weight isn't a major concern. Here too, you will learn techniques to make handling it easier than just trying to hoss it around from rack to transport to the water and back. A canoe cart is a good start. Post up a picture when you can. I'd like to see it. Yellow is one of the less common factory colors from what I have seen.

Michael :thumbup:
 
From what I've read for this particular model, less than 2% sold were yellow. This was more than likely a special order item as it is a yellow hull with green gunwales. I'll post a picture shortly... I have a good one from the first trip we took with it.

Bo T: Not exactly like that no... The hull is similar and that is the correct color but the gunwales and seats are all a molded fiberglass and actually it's all one piece. Kinda unique and I haven't seen any others that were exactly like it.

I will post a pic of my own canoe but until I do, here is a thread (and if it's not cool to post a link then let me know) to another forum where someone bought the same model but in different colors. http://forums.wcha.org/showthread.php?3023-73-Old-Town-FG-16-SN-18759-0
 
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:D
 
That's an awesomely awesome canoe, Codger—except it doesn't have any cup holders, and it doesn't look like it comes with oars. :D
 
I once watched a welder repair aluminum canoes.As a metallurgist I was interested. But then I realized that most of the repairs were due to manufacturing defects ! Cutting off excess rubber seals they cut into the hull !! These were river canoes and the rocks were causing lots of dents. The aluminum ones were replaced with sandwich type constuction of polymers which held up much better !
 
mete said:
I once watched a welder repair aluminum canoes.As a metallurgist I was interested. But then I realized that most of the repairs were due to manufacturing defects ! Cutting off excess rubber seals they cut into the hull !! These were river canoes and the rocks were causing lots of dents. The aluminum ones were replaced with sandwich type constuction of polymers which held up much better !
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Yep, each hull material has it's pros and cons. The sandwich construction is called Royalex and was developed by Dupont. It is scheduled to be discontinued in the spring by the new subsequent owners of the plastics company that bought the division from Dupont. So that leaves single and multi layer polyethelyne, aluminum and hand laid composites on the market as far as new canoes goes. A part of the reason is a declining market for traditional styled canoes. Current fad is trending more and more to kayaks and kayak/canoe hybrids which lend themselves to blow molding and rotomolding of poly.
 
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