Serial Number Search

walker

Curious about Wooden Canoes
I recently purchased two Old Town Canoes and one has a serial number of 8458 16. I understand the 16 is the length, but can anyone help with the rest? Thank you.
 
Welcome and congratulations, it appears that you have a 16 foot canoe but the Old Town and Kennebec records for number 8458 both show 17 foot canoes. The Carleton record for this number shows 16 foot canoe so some pictures for your canoe including the areas around the serial numbers from both ends would help. The tricks at http://www.wcha.org/forums/index.php?threads/791/ may also be useful.

The Carleton canoe with serial number 8458 is a 16 foot long, CS (Common Sense or middle) grade, Carleton model with western red cedar planking, closed spruce gunwales, ash decks, ash thwarts, ash seats, a keel, and sponsons. It was built between July, 1911 and May, 1914. The original exterior paint color was dark red. It shipped on May 9th, 1914 to the Greenhut, Siegel, Cooper Company in New York City. (Macy's sold the Old Town line at this time so other dealers in the area sold the Carleton line.) Scans of both build records can be found by following the links under the thumbnail images attached below.

8458.jpg c-8458.jpg

These scans and several hundred thousand more 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 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. Let us know what you find,

Benson
 
Thank you for your help and your quick response. I will be asking about the other canoe soon. Thank you again, this has been great!
 
Benson,
Attached are some pictures of the canoe. Thank you.IMG_1960[1].JPG IMG_1959[1].JPG IMG_1958[1].JPG IMG_1956[1].JPG IMG_1956[1].JPG IMG_1956[1].JPG IMG_1958[1].JPG IMG_1959[1].JPG IMG_1960[1].JPG
 

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I had a chance to go get the other boat today I have enclosed some pictures. The serial is 150676 16 If you could give me some help on what this is it would be great. Thank you for your help. Also, I am in The Northeast and a looking for a restorer. Any suggestions? Thanks again.
 
Looks like an Old Town double ender. Someone will be along with the build sheet soon but here are a couple photos of mine.IMG_1673.jpgIMG_1674.jpgIMG_1679.jpg
 
They were for another boat so I had to modify them slightly but I believe they were available for that boat in the catalogue. The seats have a rabbit in the back edge to catch the seat backs. Here is a photo of that rabbit. actually made of a separate piece.IMG_0872.jpg Does your boat have that detail?
 
actually I can see in your photos that yours does have that extra rabbited piece behind the end seats. Since mine didn't have the original seat backs I didn't know what that piece was for until Benson showed me the pictures in the catalogue.
 
The Old Town with serial number 150676 is a 16 foot long double end boat model in CS (Common Sense or the middle) grade with red Western cedar planking, open spruce gunwales, ash decks, spruce thwarts, spruce seats, a keel, outside stems, and a floor rack. It was built between March and May, 1948. The original exterior paint color was dark green. It was shipped on May 24th, 1948 to Old Forge, New York. A scan of this build record can be found by following the link at the attached thumbnail image below.

150676.jpg

See http://www.wcha.org/forums/index.php?attachments/30347/ and http://www.wcha.org/forums/index.php?threads/12705/ for some catalog images showing the back rests as Craig mentioned. More images like this are available from http://www.wcha.org/store/complete-old-town-canoe-company-catalog-collection in the scanned catalogs. Let us know if you have any other questions.

Benson
 
My OT Charles river was sent to Old Forge and was a part of a boat livery there too! You may already know this, Rivett's Boat Livery is still in business. Pretty cool!
 
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