Old Town Canoe s/n 153395 - 16

John Janicek

Curious about Wooden Canoes
Hello. I'm with the Bayles Boat Shop here in Port Jefferson NY and we recently had a gentleman come in inquiring about restoring his vintage old town canoe. It's not a basket case but it is in need of a good bit of restoration work (its been fiberglassed over, ugh!). I told him I would try and find out what I could about his craft which has led me to your website. Thank God! If we do decide to tackle this restoration your site and associated links will prove invaluable to the project. Thank you in advance for your help in uncovering any pertinent build information on this canoe .
 
Welcome, the Old Town canoe with serial number 153395 is a 16 foot long, CS (Common Sense or middle) grade, HW (heavy water) model with red Western cedar planking, open spruce gunwales, and a keel. It was built between September and November, 1949. The original exterior paint color was light Yale blue. It shipped on February 28th, 1950 to Pompton Plains, Pequannock Township, New Jersey. It was returned damaged on April 18th, 1950. There may be more details on the back side but that wasn't scanned, unfortunately. A scan showing this build record can be found below.

This scan and several hundred thousand more were created with substantial grants from the Wooden Canoe Heritage Association (WCHA) and others as you probably know well. 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 donate, 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 also 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



153395.jpg
 
I was at the factory recently and able to get better images showing both sides of this build record as shown below. It appears that there was a previous request for a copy of this information in 1972 from Lake Ronkonkoma, New York. Let me know if you have any other questions,

Benson


OTC-153395.jpg




OTC-153395-b.jpg
 
Thank you for taking the time to check on this particular search. It's interesting that the copy request from 1972 was from the family of the current owners, possibly his grandfather. The current owners father did not mention anything about this possibility but since he's getting on in years he likely forgot (as I am prone to do now). I will forward to the current owners as will like having the record complete. Thanks again for the info.

John

PS Did you get the reproducible scan for the small Old Town decal I sent you awhile back?
 
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