Build Info Request - Old Town S/n 119411 - 16

Welcome, the Old Town canoe with serial number 119411 is a 16 foot long, CS (Common Sense or middle) grade, HW (Heavy Water) model with open spruce gunwales, oak decks, oak thwarts, oak seats, a keel, and sponsons. It was built between October, 1936 and February, 1937. The original exterior paint color was dark red with a white hair line stripe. It shipped on March 30th, 1937 to Long Island City, New York. A scan of this build record can be found by following the link at the attached thumbnail image below.



This scan 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/catalogs/old-town/records/ if you want more details. I hope that you will join or renew your membership to the WCHA so that services like this can continue. See http://www.wcha.org/about-wcha to learn more about the WCHA and http://www.wcha.org/store/membership to join.

It is possible that you could have another number or manufacturer if this description doesn't match your canoe. Feel free to reply here if you have any other questions.

Benson

 

Oops, I have corrected the error. "Open" in this case is a descriptor for the type of gunwale and not for the species of spruce wood. The diagram on the bottom of the page at http://www.wcha.org/catalogs/old-town/specific.gif shows the differences. It appears that the term "sponson" was created in the mid 1800s to describe additions on the sides of ships to help support cannons and paddle wheels. The first documented use of them on canoes may be the 1901 Old Town catalog. There is a fair amount of information about sponsons at http://www.wcha.org/forums/index.php?threads/6982/ including the patent for invisible sponsons from 1908 and an unsubstantiated claim from 1965 that White invented them. Chestnut got the Canadian patent number 93181 on May 16th, 1905 for "air chambers" (i.e. sponsons) although they clearly didn't invent them. (See https://nouzie.com/maritime-inventions-chestnut-canoe/ for a new perspective on why Chestnut patented 'trade secrets' from other manufacturers.) Most sponsons are added after the canoe is nearly finished. The usual approach is to canvas and fill the canoe then canvas and fill each sponson before putting it all back together. This is a lot of work so sponsons are frequently not reinstalled when a canoe is repaired. There is a fair amount of information about sponsons and gunwales available here if you use the search function. Welcome to the WCHA,

Benson

 

Old Town and Chestnut had a brief dispute over the hiring of employees that is well documented in Roger MacGregor's fine book "When the Chestnut was in Flower: Inside the Chestnut Canoe." My understanding is that the lawsuit was dismissed on jurisdictional grounds, not on the merits of the case. Old Town decided not to pursue it further because they felt that a Canadian court would never give them a fair trial in an international dispute like this. The information about tariffs and their impact on canoe distribution at http://www.wcha.org/forums/index.php?threads/14830/ indicates that Old Town and Chestnut did not really compete that much in the marketplace. Let me know if this doesn't answer your question,

Benson