Housatonic Canoe Shop

08/20/2026

1942 Old Town Fifty Pounder Wood Canvas Canoe
This is the somewhat rare 11 foot long version of Old Town's 50 Pounder model line. It is a very maneuverable and fun canoe. The width at the mid point of the gunwales is 34" and depth is 13". The weight is 50 pounds.
I found this canoe in pretty decent shape at the beginning of 2020 and finished a complete restoration in August 2025. It received new canvas, new varnish, fresh seat cane, and a few small woodworking repairs. The keel was deleted to save weight. A new carrying yoke was made and the original thwart is included. The hull is almost completely original. The restoration was completed using proven traditional methods and quality finishes from Petit and Kirby Paint.
I have been using the canoe regularly since it was finished and there are some minor paint scuffs on the bottom.
Island Falls Canoe in Maine still builds this model under license for Old Town. A new canoe starts at $5200.
$3000. Located near Little Falls, NY, 13365.

08/17/2026

1966 Old Town 15' Fifty Pounder.
This canoe needed relatively little work to get it back on the water. It got scheduled in with a couple of very extensive restorations, which slowed the progress on this one down quite a bit. This restoration included:
-new canvas, filler, and paint
-rebuilt end tips with new decks. Almost every canoe needs this service to some extent
-inner gunwale splice repair to fix a break at the center thwart mounting point
-refinishing the gunwales, seats, and thwart
This canoe is much younger than most of the canoes I end up working on. It might seem odd to say this canoe is young at "only" 60 years old, but it is a testament to the long term durability of the wood canvas building style. This canoe should be able to provide more decades of service with a little care and occasional maintenance.

08/02/2026

1924 Old Town 18' Guide model complete restoration.
This canoe was another extensive project, needing a lot of woodworking repairs to fix problems accumulated over a century since it was first built. This restoration included:
-new canvas, filler, and paint
-stripped, sanded, and revarnished all wood work
-new keel
-recane original handwoven seats
-new brass stembands
-rebuilt inner gunwale and stem tips, with new steambent birch decks
-completely new outer gunwales
-15 new ribs
-several partial rib tip and hidden backside splice repairs
-a few dozen feet of new planking
This is a big, heavy, slow canoe, right at the limit of what I would want to move around and paddle and load onto the car by myself. It would comfortably carry two paddles and a great amount of gear, or even three paddlers packing light. Guides in the northwoods of Maine preferred longer, larger displacement canoes as it meant the ability to carry larger loads with less draft, enabling easier traversal of the many shallow rocky rivers of the region.

07/28/2026

1933 Old Town 13' Fifty Pounder full restoration done.
This canoe was very well loved, with little rot damage and a decent amount of mechanical damage. This restoration included:
-New canvas, filler, and paint
-Completely stripped and revarnished woodwork
-New mahogany center thwart and hand caned seats
-Rebuilt inwale tips, stem tips, and new decks
-About 40 feet of new planking
-10 new ribs and several hidden rib back splice repairs
-Numerous fiddly little repairs to the outer gunwales to be able to reuse them
This is a lot of work for such a little boat, but it's survived mostly intact for 90 years so far and should be good to go for many years to come.

07/02/2026

17' Old Town of unknown age repaired and recanvassed. At first glance, this canoe was in pretty good shape. Further inspection revealed that it had a decent amount of restoration work done to it in the past and needed more repairs and a new canvas. The owner chose to do the interior varnish himself, so this was more like 2/3 of a full restoration. This canoe received:
-recanvassing service
-new mahogany outer gunwales
-one entire new stem
-several rib replacements
-several planking replacements
-numerous rib back side repairs and rib tip repairs
-inner gunwale splice repairs
One of the stems had already been replaced and did not have the serial number on it, and the number on the other stem was unreadable, so the exact age of the canoe is unknown. I think this canoe might be from before 1923, as there were signs that the thwart bolts used to be the old countersunk style that Old Town used before the famous diamond head carriage bolts, which they started to use in the early 1920's. It looks like the counterbores had been filled and the bolts replaced during previous restoration work.

06/23/2026

06/23/2026

Thompson "Take Along" wood canvas row/motor boat done. This little boat ended up being a big restoration project that included:
-stripping, sanding, and revarnishing all woodwork(minimum 5 coats of new varnish)
-new canvas, filler, and paint
-completely new inner and outer gunwales, with all hidden surfaces treated and pre-finished to prevent rot
-new keel and outer stem
-new plywood transom cover
-added brass stembands
-new sheer planks
All of the ribs and most of the planking are original in this boat, but the planks did need many new tacks added(1000+?) and all the original tacks retightened. Most of the trim work was in good shape to be refinished and reused, but the closed gunwale system meant that the gunwales were too rotten to be reused.
This is the first boat I've been able to finish in quite a while, but there will be many more done over the summer coming up.

04/25/2026

Have you ever wanted to make your own canoe paddle but don't have the tools or the knowledge to get started? For the third year in a row, I will be leading a paddle carving class at the Wooden Canoe Heritage Association's Annual Assembly. Taking place this year at Keuka College in the Finger Lakes Region of Upstate NY, the Assembly is the event of the year for people who appreciate and love classic wooden canoes.
The class will take place on Thursday, July 16th and Friday, July 17th. Limited to four people per day, we will use hand tools to shape a pre-prepared paddle blank into a traditional one piece black cherry paddle made to your specifications. Contact me via phone or email to reserve your place and specify length and blade shape of paddle. Cost is $100, less than the cost to buy one of these paddles! Come join us to learn how to use classic hand tools like block planes and spokeshaves, learn about material selection, paddle design characteristics, measuring and marking techniques, and create a functional work of art.

10/26/2025

1948 Old Town 15 foot Fifty Pounder at the halfway point. The hull is varnished, the canvas is on and filled, and most of the trim pieces are ready for installation. This canoe was purchased new by the owner's father then restored by him about 20 years later after plenty of use. It needed a substantial amount of work to get to this point, including 20 new ribs, 40 feet of planking, 13 hidden rib back splices to repair partial cracks without replacing the entire rib, rebuilding the rotted ends, and carefully stripping, scraping, and sanding every inch to get the wood ready for new varnish.