First and foremost, Adam, you got a very nice canoe. Good score.
At first blush, my thoughts are as follows and they are only my opinions and observations based on the photos and description posted. I may be completely off base.
My first thought was that this canoe was probably built by someone other than Crandell that he picked up, repaired and added to his rental fleet. He added his name tag to ID it as one that he owned.
The obvious difference between the subject canoe (#355) and other Crandells is the deck. Howard Crandell and his father-in-law John Robertson used a three lobe or ‘W’ shaped deck. My Crandell (#368), Bill Conrad’s and the Crandell owned by Ross Brothers, photos of which are on their website (
http://www.rossbros.com/crandel.htm ), all have that style deck as well as the distinctive nickel plated brass hardware. The Crandell that John Fitzgerald helped out with has the same deck as Adam’s canoe. Both closely resemble an Old Town deck and neither have the hardware.
Secondly, the stem on my Crandell terminates on a rib not between ribs as is seen on the subject canoe. That may be significant of nothing because the stem on Bill Conrad’s Crandell ends between ribs and the marked Crandell John Fitzgerald helped out with ends at the edge of a rib. The serial number on mine has a font style best compared to ‘Italic’ (MS Word). The height of the numbers is at least half the width of the stem. Unfortunately it is so faint that it does not show up in the attached photo. The serial number of the subject canoe is a different style. The subject canoe #355 and my canoe #368 are only 13 canoes apart and it begs the question as to why was a different numbering die set used on the two canoes? It may again be significant of nothing.
Attached is a photo of my Crandell that shows the planking pattern. Also attached is a picture of the planking pattern of the marked Crandell that John helped out with. Adam attached above a picture of the planking pattern of the canoe that started this thread. The three look the same to me.
The seat frames on all the canoes look to be the same style. Simple frames with no rounded edges. The number of caning holes differs from canoe to canoe. Again this may be significant of nothing. The stern seat on mine, John’s and Bill Conrad’s canoe as well as the subject canoe all use a short brass tube as a spacer. All the thwarts match. They are flat on the bottom with a sharp edge and rounded over top. My canoe is the only one where the ends of the thwarts are not stamped with Crandell’s name.
Sometimes I think we over analyze these canoes that have variations from the norm. I believe what Adam has and the canoe that John worked on are genuine Crandells albeit with a different deck style. In his catalog Howard Crandell said he only built 17 ft. canoes because he felt that was the best but that he would build “other sizes” if requested. I think what we are seeing is one of the “other” ones.
Attached are photos of my canoe and a photo set of the canoe John worked on.
JimC