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My last 2 canoe builds have been stemless and I haven’t tried fiberglassing that sharp turn inside the stems. On my latest Pal I did thicken some epoxy and try to do a fillet to round out that area thinking that would make it Easier to fit a bias cut strip in there. The fillet turned out to be a little bit of a mess, so I ditched the idea and scraped out the epoxy. Does anyone worry about fiberglassing the inside stem? It seems like there’s plenty of strength with multiple bias strips on the...

I have no idea how basic this is, but I found it interesting to see an alternative to steam bending.

I've been noticing how the stems of different wood-canvas canoes have different stem curve shapes or radii. For example, this 1916 Old Town OTCA was made for Percy Rockefeller, and its stem curve shape is close to circular. My Rollin Thurlow reproduction of a circa 1900 Morris, which I assume is very faithful to the original geometry, shows more of a slightly elliptical stem curve—sort of an inchoate "pointiness" at the nose. This elliptical radius pointiness seems to reach a zenith in...