A canoe in a weekend ?

Yes, it can be done, and here is a description of how the Tindales built their 15'6" Jem Iroquois in a weekend.

The canoe panels were sawn out on the Friday evening, starting around 4pm, and the panels were butt-jointed and left to set over night. In the morning the two pairs of panels were laid on top of each other, as shown above, and holes drilled at the ends. You can see how we fix a strip of ply between the panels front and back, this seems to make a great job of firming up these parts of the boat.

The panels were then cable-tied together; as you can see, this is a job for the whole family. Here is Joe who rapidly became an expert.

The panels come together quickly on the Saturday morning; you can see this is an exciting phase and the whole family is there in force to help hold the panels and see their boat emerging from the table.

The seat and yoke supports are resined and screwed into place before the bottom is cut out; this helps keep the shape.

 The seams are all brushed with sawdust and resin paste, to fill any cracks, and then taped over in the usual way. We are using Polyester resin. This was  Saturday 4pm.

A long hard slog gets the boat ready for its exterior seam tape by Saturday night. This shot was taken Saturday night after 11pm. The entire seam preparation was undertaken using hand-tools, plane, surform, and rasp-plane.

Here are the Tindales with their boat, to be called Silver Fish, on Sunday afternoon. There is a strip of polythene in the bottom of the boat to help reduce muddy welly marks; this boat has only had one coat of water-based quick-drying floor varnish, and they will need to clean it and apply more varnish when they get home.

And here they all are on the water; we've had a weekend of heavy rain, and the river is swollen and muddy, but Silver Fish handles well with the whole family on board, and we even had a bit of sunshine for the launch.