The Old Town canoe with serial number 125972 is a 16 foot long, CS (Common Sense or middle) grade, HW (heavy water) model with open spruce gunwales, birch decks, birch thwarts, birch seats, oval outside finish rails, a keel, and a bob stay (painter ring down low on the bow). It was built between December, 1938 and February, 1939. The original exterior paint color was bright green. It shipped on March 9th, 1939 to Chicago, Illinois and was returned for extensive repairs on August 6th, 1946 as detailed on the back side of the record. A scan showing both sides of this build record can be found by following the links at the attached thumbnail images below.
These scans and several hundred thousand others were created with substantial grants from the Wooden Canoe Heritage Association (WCHA) and others. A description of the project to preserve these records is available at
http://www.wcha.org/ot_records/ if you want more details. I hope that you will renew your membership to the WCHA so that services like this can continue. See
http://www.wcha.org/about-the-wcha/ to learn more about the WCHA and
http://store.wcha.org/WCHA-New-Membership.html to renew.
It is also possible that you could have another number or manufacturer if this description doesn't match your canoe. The messages at
http://forums.wcha.org/showthread.php?57 have a good summary of how to best value a canoe like this. Feel free to reply here if you have any other questions.
Benson
