What is a cedar-strip canoe, anyway? The basic idea behind a cedar-strip canoe is to make a hull of narrow wood strips, each one glued to the next with ordinary carpenter’s glue, and then cover the ...

“So you’re starting to see what I mean about all the sanding?” says Ron Pellinen, my wooden canoe-building mentor, when I walk into his shop on a brisk March morning in Northern Ontario. Perched on an ...