Design and Construction

Canoe Materials

• Early canoes were wooden, often simply hollowed-out tree trunks. This technology is still practiced in some parts of the world.
• Modern wooden canoes are typically strip-built by woodworking craftsmen. Such canoes can be very functional, lightweight, and strong, and are frequently quite beautiful works of art.
• Birch bark and a mixture of tar and tree sap were used by the American Indians of temperate North America, and later became the standard form of transport for Voyageurs of the fur trade.
• Wood-and-Canvas canoes are made by fastening an external canvas shell to a wooden hull. These use of canvas for this purpose was invented by Union scouts during the United States Civil War.
• Aluminium canoes were first made by the Grumman company in 1944, when demand for airplanes for World War II began to drop off. Aluminium allowed a lighter and much stronger construction than contemporary wood technology. However, aluminium is denser than water, so a capsized aluminium canoe will sink unless the ends are filled with flotation devices.
• Royalex is a modern composite material that makes an extremely flexible and durable hull. Royalex canoes have been known, after being wrapped around a rock, to be popped back into their original shapes with minimal creasing of the hull.
• Composites of fibreglass and Kevlar are also used for modern canoe construction.

Depending on the intended use of a canoe, the various kinds have different advantages. For example, a canvas canoe is more fragile than an aluminium canoe, and thus less suitable for use in rough water; but it is quieter, and so better for observing wildlife. However, canoes made of natural materials require regular maintenance, and are lacking in durability.

Hull Design Considerations

A rounded-bottom canoe exhibits poor resistance to small degrees of tilt, but is difficult to overturn (that is, its initial stability is lacking, but its final stability is good). A flat-bottomed canoe has excellent initial stability, but if tilted beyond a threshold, becomes unstable and will capsize. Round-bottomed designs are also able to go over obstructions much more easily, due to a small area of contact with the obstruction, though they do have a slightly greater draft. Many canoes are symmetrical about the centreline, but some advanced designs are asymmetrical.

Keels on canoes may slightly increase the ability to 'track' in a straight line with crosswind, but decrease the ability to turn quickly to avoid an obstacle. "Vee"-bottom canoes have an integrated keel-like protrusion of the hull, which increases initial stability. Some sort of keel is beneficial when travelling on open water with crosswinds, but the associated increase in draft is undesirable for whitewater.

Keels don't really appreciably help canoes go in a straight line. Canoes are displacement craft. Their hull, moving through the water, is much larger than the keel alone, and ha...