More New Canoe Mods...

[Al Agnew]

Eric's post on his cool new canoe seat prompted me to post about a couple things I just completed for my solo canoe.

The first is that I just discovered that not only do five 3701 Plano tackle boxes fit perfectly in a big plastic auto battery box from Wally World, but four 3600 Plano boxes fit perfectly in a smaller battery box from the same place. Don't know why I didn't check this out before. I've been using a soft-sided bag with homemade internal reinforcing and homemade velcro straps to hold it on my canoe thwart, but the bag was getting worn out. So I roamed the aisles of the big box store, and finally got to the battery section, measured the smaller box, and eureka!

Here's a picture of my bigger box, to which I attached the velcro straps so I could strap it to the underside of the bench seat in the canoe:

Here's the new little box:

I added the same velcro strap system I had on my old soft sided bag. I could have just cut slits in the "top" (actually the side if you were using it as a battery box) and inserted the velcro straps through them, but the straps are rather thick and would have possibly made the Plano boxes fit a little too tightly. As it is, they fit pretty tight due to the bolt heads I used to attach the plastic thing that the straps attach to, even though the bolts are flat-headed. Here's the new box in position on the thwart of the canoe:

The rope you see is a carrying strap that goes over my shoulder. Today I did a float where the take-out was up a big steep hill, and being able to carry both those boxes on my shoulders was useful.

The other new thing is a seat back that I devised myself. I had come up with this idea several years ago and made seat backs, but made the mistake of making them out of some kind of wood that was too soft, and they split and didn't hold up. So this time I used the same design but made it a little more robust, and used red oak, which I figure is probably going to be strong enough. This seat back is entirely portable, takes no time at all to attach to the seat, works on bench seats and the suspended tractor style seat I have on one of my solos, folds down instantly if you need to fold it down to get under a log or something, and is adjustable to four positions. Here's the new seat back:

Here it is attached to the canoe seat:

It balances to where you don't have to use anything to keep it in this position. Here's a closer view of how it fits on the bench style seat:

Here's the thing I devised to make the seat back adjustable to four different positions. This is the block that stops the seat back:

As you can see, I drilled the hole in it off center, measuring carefully so that the hole is a different distance away from all four sides. All you do is turn this knob (on both sides of the seat back) to the position you want. The side that's closest to the bolt hole, if up against the seat back, will make it recline the farthest, the side that's the farthest away from the bolt hole will make it recline the least (actually stick almost straight up). This part took some careful drawing out and careful measuring to place the knob in relation to the seat back sides, and also to get the hole drilled in the right spot. I've never seen anything like this in commercial seat backs...I should probably patent it!

Here's the seat back removed from the canoe and folded for carrying and storage:

As you might be able to see, I made the seat back uprights and the adjustment knob attach to a separate piece of wood that is screwed and glued to the inside of the parts that attach to the bench seat. I could have made those two pieces all one piece, which would have made the seat back itself 1.5 inches wider. It would have worked just fine for the solos. But made two of these seat backs, so that I'd have them for my tandem as well, and the back seat of my tandem is so close to the back of the canoe that the canoe behind it is too narrow for the those attachment pieces to fit behind the seat. So I had to offset them inward in back to make them fit in the tandem. I actually used my old seat back boards which were already that smaller size.

One other thing I just did was get a big mesh laundry bag. In Missouri, there is a law that all canoes on Ozark streams should have a mesh bag to collect and store their trash, as a response to the myriads of party idiots who rent canoes, get drunk, and toss their empties all over the river. The canoe rentals furnish mesh potato bags. I decided I wanted a mesh bag that would be big enough to put my canoe seat, cushion, life jacket, and any other smaller items I need to carry to and from the river at the difficult accesses I often use. It worked very well today.

By the way, I had been using a Sit-backer commercial seat back and cushion combined, but I found both the back and cushion to not be as comfortable as my old homemade system, which is why I rebuilt the seat back. For me, what works the most comfortably is this hard back with my life jacket draped over it for cushioning (assuming I'm not wearing the life jacket...I only wear mine in cold weather or if I'm on a bigger river in high water levels. It might not be the smartest thing to not do, but on most of the streams I float, if you happen to flip it's usually in water less than two feet deep.) For a cushion to sit upon, I've found a small Thermorest self-inflating nylon pad to work the best. You can adjust the level of inflation to make it harder or softer. Today I floated for eight hours, only getting out of the canoe three times, and my butt never got sore.

[Stoneroller]

wow those are awesome! both the tackle box holders and the seat back.(although i abhore walmarx) you could even get tricky with the seat back and make it from teak although i'm sure it would be more spendy.

[ness]

Very cool mods, Al. That reclining back adjuster thingy is ingenious!

[Gavin]

Looks great!