I don't know how many were made, but I did look up the build record for you, just in case you don't already have that. Old Town #171818 was a 16-foot lapstrake boat (marked 1962) that was built in 1962 and shipped to a cycle and marine store in Utica, N.Y. It was originally white.
The scan of this record is attached below-- click on it to get a larger image. 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/ot_records/ if you want more details. I hope that you and anyone else reading this will join or renew membership in the WCHA so that services like this can continue. See http://www.wcha.org/wcha/ to learn more about the WCHA and http://www.wcha.org/join.php to renew.
Norm
The scan of this record is attached below-- click on it to get a larger image. 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/ot_records/ if you want more details. I hope that you and anyone else reading this will join or renew membership in the WCHA so that services like this can continue. See http://www.wcha.org/wcha/ to learn more about the WCHA and http://www.wcha.org/join.php to renew.
Norm
Attachments
Kathryn Klos
squirrel whisperer
Hi--
There may be someone who has a general idea how many were made, but actually "knowing" for certain could only be done by going through many thousands of build records... like a quarter of a million of them... and weeding out the model you are curious about. This might be narrowed a bit if you knew generally when they were made and then only looked at the build records for those years.
Old Town put all its boats into one serial number series, which makes it wonderful for those of us who look up records because there's only one database-- not a separate database for each type of boat. But if you're looking for one type of boat, it means going through records that include everything.
Roger Young suffered some vision problems while working on a project involving looking up the model canoes built by OT... so, searching through the build records can be done... but can be a huge project, with complications! I've periodically looked through OT's records from the 1920s to find Molitor models and have found that in small doses my eyes don't hurt and I don't go bonkers over it.
As for knowing how many are still out there... not many motor boats come to these forums, but maybe a wooden boat oriented forum would have a more accurate guess.
Kathy
There may be someone who has a general idea how many were made, but actually "knowing" for certain could only be done by going through many thousands of build records... like a quarter of a million of them... and weeding out the model you are curious about. This might be narrowed a bit if you knew generally when they were made and then only looked at the build records for those years.
Old Town put all its boats into one serial number series, which makes it wonderful for those of us who look up records because there's only one database-- not a separate database for each type of boat. But if you're looking for one type of boat, it means going through records that include everything.
Roger Young suffered some vision problems while working on a project involving looking up the model canoes built by OT... so, searching through the build records can be done... but can be a huge project, with complications! I've periodically looked through OT's records from the 1920s to find Molitor models and have found that in small doses my eyes don't hurt and I don't go bonkers over it.
As for knowing how many are still out there... not many motor boats come to these forums, but maybe a wooden boat oriented forum would have a more accurate guess.
Kathy
Based on spot sampling (13890 of 210999 records), 2% or just over 4200 lapstrake outboards were built. For more information, see http://wcha.org/legacypages/ot_records/
There really is no way to know how many still survive.
I am restoring a 1953 15' OT lapstrake runabout. I have researched OT runabouts for the last month and there are not many around. I found one reference to my model ( outboard model) on a classic boat/car site in n. carolina. I have found 2 or 3 other models on various sites around the net. The Wooden boat site does not have much to offer either. I don't know why that is. Maybe people tend to leave runabouts in the water all season (exposing them to the elements) as opposed to taking a canoe out after each use. Cheers Mike
