Mad River Northwoods info sought. UPDATE: I Bought It.....

[LanceR]

Friends, I am on the track of a Mad River Northwoods and while I continue to try to reach the owner I'm hoping that somewhere in the vast repository of canoe lore here on CT.com that someone has personal experience with this boat.

Our 55 pound hound, Rosie has now been added to the paddling crew so we're looking for larger tripping canoe than our Royalex Wenonah Adirondack which is 16' long, 36" wide, 13.5" center point depth and, if memory serves, 67#.

I don't yet know what this particular Northwoods is made of but I see weights of 64# for Kevlar, 82# for fiberglass (apparently a really stout layup) and 78# for Royalex. As we don't really do any long portages the weight of the fiberglass or Royalex Northwoods wouldn't be a deal breaker and one of our canoes is 80# anyway so it would come down to suitability. And I'll be buying this canoe long distance, see it only in pictures and a son who lives a few miles from it will pick it up for me and hold it until one of us makes the trek to see the other one.

So the Northwoods appears to spec out at 17' 6" long, 36" wide and a mid depth of 14", asymmetrical, shallow Vee, straight line keel with slight rocker at the ends. This Northwoods dimensions and the weights were gleaned from a post on another site as I can't find any 1980-1983 Mad River literature online and it was only made for those years.

Does anyone have any experience with a Mad River Northwoods to share?

Thanks and best regards to all,


Lance

 

[Guest]

No first hand experience with the early 80’s Northwoods, and I’d love to see an early 80’s MRC catalog scan of that canoe.

The 1980’s Mad River’s hand-laid composite work was usually impeccable, and their glass boats were stout as heck. Jim Henry, or his shop monkeys, must have been a competent crew, and taken pride in their work.

I am interested in the specs and design intentions of that vintage MRC, and, as usual, in the history of Mad River’s later model descendant hulls.

dang but I wish corporate MRC hadn’t done away with links they once offered to their early Vermont era catalogs. Or at least that I had printed them all off while they were available.

Again, we need a repository of old catalog scans for reference.

 

[Carp]

Again, we need a repository of old catalog scans for reference.

https://web.archive.org/web/2011112...ages/index/customer_service/archived_catalogs

Donate to archive.org if you'd like to make sure it's preserved.

-carp

 

[Guest]

Carp, awesome, thank you. Bookmarked.

I've got some shop work to finish up, but may spend part of the day looking through those old MRC catalogs.

 

[LanceR]

Well, the Mad River Northwoods is 600 miles by road from me but just a few miles from my youngest son and a nephew. After a lot of pictures, talk and Q&A we made the deal. My son and nephew will pick it up and store it in a workshop shed until I get up to Buffalo for a visit. The seller bought it new in late 1979 and has had it since then.

The fiberglass canoe has been stored indoors all its life, has ash gunwales, seats etc that are all in good shape other than needing a cleaning and oiling and the seats, as would be expected need new caning or, more likely, webbing. I may just make new seats though as I'd like to give larger contoured seats a try.

The seller thinks he still has a custom outrigger set he had made for the canoe buried somewhere and will pass it on of he finds it. It comes with a full spray skirt and a few other bits and pieces and all for less than the new spray skirt would cost.

The lower hull has a fair bit of scrapes from "shallow Western New York Creeks" but none are through the gelcoat. The fiberglass Mad River canoes of the era were built stout so at 82 pounds catalog weight I'm glad we don't do much of anything in long portages. I'm thinking it's time for a cart/dolly for those portages and put-ins where I can use one.

I had to copy and paste some of the pictures and wasn't able to size them all the same. Those are the spray skirt snaps on the bottom of the gunwales.....











So when this dang virus allows safe traveling again we have a now 4 month old granddaughter we haven't yet seen let alone held, another grandson due before we (probably) get there and a lot of other family to visit in Upstate New York. And at least one canoe to bring back to North Carolina. Do me a favor, please. Please, please, please don't remind Nancy how many consecutive road trips this will make where we returned with new-to-us canoes.....

And my to do list just got a bit longer.

Best regards to all,


Lance

 

[bark-eater]

I've got one that the wood work rotted off of. It ended up out side for a year and mushrooms sprouted immediately from the gunnels. Other canoes in the pile of neglect have faired much better. I'm not sure if it's a mad river thing but a while back I was given a kevlar Malachite hull that the wood was compleatly gone from, probably from the same vintage. The Northwoods hull is fiber glass and a much lighter layup than my other glass canoe. One bit it of trivia is that the Northwoods was a very competitive hull for ACA class canoe sailing races. Eventually I am going to build this hull back up as a dedicated sailing canoe. Mine will need some glass work and paint as well.

 

[LanceR]

Good luck with your projects.

My son and nephew pick the Northwoods up Sunday. The nephew used to sell canoes among other stuff and had a few Mad River canoes in the late 1990s and early 2000s including what he just reminded me was his favorite solo day canoe, a Kevlar Courier. He's the one storing it until I can get to Buffalo.

He'll give me a better condition report and alert me to anything that is not essentially cosmetic. At any rate when it does get to North Carolina the first order of business other than maybe a quick paddle or two will be a full blown triage to determine what I need to order or make and in what order I want to work through it.

I have enough projects to do until it arrives....more than enough.

Best regards,


Lance

 

[Guest]

The nephew used to sell canoes among other stuff and had a few Mad River canoes in the late 1990s and early 2000s including what he just reminded me was his favorite solo day canoe, a Kevlar Courier.

The Courier was a wonderful downriver solo. A kevlar one would be a treasure.

At any rate when it does get to North Carolina the first order of business other than maybe a quick paddle or two will be a full blown triage to determine what I need to order or make and in what order I want to work through it.

Probably not much. The bottom on that 40 year old canoe has fewer scratches than most of my boats. Even the interior is in better shape.

At first glance probably remove the thwarts and sand, revarnish and reseal the butt ends. Oil or varnish the gunwales, depending on what the original owned did. The brightwork looks solid, original ’79 decks and the plywood covered seat frames may only need webbing (or, ugh, cane). Oh, yeah, replace the flimsy peg drops with something more substantial.

Maybe install long, narrow skid plates eventually, although, again, even those 40 years old stems are in better shape than most of our canoes. That was truly a well cared for canoe, and for once I believe the “always stored indoors”. (I can hook you up with some Dynel sleeve and peel ply tape when the time comes)

Second the canoe cart for long carries to and from the launch. One thing seems oddly missing - no yoke! On a 17’ 6” canoe weighing 80-ish lbs you’ll want a real yoke, even just to get it on and off storage racks and rooftop crossbars.

Maybe a nicely sculpted contour yoke, with wide enough ends to double hang with two machine screws on each side.

P7140014 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

Outrigger? Did he sail it?

The spray skirt looks well designed. Are the white plastic things on the inwales connections for undercover stays? If he finds the outrigger maybe he still has the stays, or were they among the other bits and pieces?

So many questions. Any paddles thrown into the deal? Most of the interesting wood paddles we have came with purchases of older model canoes. Any center “compartment” flap to leave open for Rosie the cat butt sniffing hound, or just leave a few snaps undone for a doghouse skylight?

Don’t know about that spray cover installation with the snap studs attached to the underside of the outwale. Seems like a finger ouchie if you ever grab the outwales and slide your hands. I guess it could serve as negative reinforcement for gunwale grabbing instead of paddle bracing.

Under gunwale is a tough place to see the snap alignment, and to press the snaps together. There dammit, I finally found something I don’t like about the Northwoods ;-)

Very cool canoe, piece of history and an awesome outfitting and refurbishment project. Looking forward to an eventual paddling report.

 

[LanceR]

Thanks for the Dynel sleeve offer Mike. And thanks for the seat hanger templates which came yesterday. I also believe the Northwoods was always stored indoors and as I have ample space with controlled humidity it will continue to be safely stored indoors. Also like you, I think that other than the need to clean and re-coat the woodwork and repair or replace the seats there will be little to deal with until any new outfitting starts but will know more later today after it gets picked up.

I'm leaning towards making more comfortable, larger contoured webbed seats for it. I want to experiment with steaming and bending the seat stringers both before and after cutting the mortises. As the bow in the stringer is between the mortises the bending operation hopefully won't stress the mortised area and so I suspect that I can mortise them first which would be easier to clamp into the mortising jig than a curved piece.

I'm not sure of whether he sailed it but he did talk of making a few modifications to be able to "travel with our children when they were younger" which is why he had the outriggers made and that could explain the missing yoke. My son will check on the support bows for the cover but if they are missing it is a matter of a few minutes to cut and rout them and they steam bend very easily.

At 17' 6" I doubt it will get much at all in the way of solo paddling from the center position so a fitted yoke is most likely going to be installed. And a rear foot brace will likely get added.

The Dagger Reflection 15 I got a while ago had nice H-pattern seat drops where my first one had unfinished drilled dowels for hangers with the sided flattened so they would fit on the narrow gunwale lip. I like the looks of the H-pattern drops and will make them for the Reflection. Once I actually get The Northwoods home I'll figure out the seat and hanger choices. The perspective of the picture looks as if they are angled on the ends but they are parallel.



Best regards to all,


Lance

 

[ppine]

Canoe people would travel a long way for a boat like that.

 

[Guest]

The Dagger Reflection 15 I got a while ago had nice H-pattern seat drops where my first one had unfinished drilled dowels for hangers with the sided flattened so they would fit on the narrow gunwale lip.

On some canoes those flattened-side peg drops appear to be leftover pieces of ash gunwale, same exact cross section dimensions.

 

[LanceR]

Why yes, canoe folks would travel a long way for the "right" canoe......

On some canoes those flattened-side peg drops appear to be leftover pieces of ash gunwale, same exact cross section dimensions.

That wouldn't surprise me a bit. Although that Reflection had aluminum gunwales I fully appreciate the motivation to make use of off-cuts and drops in the shop. Due to the way the bottom of the aluminum gunwale is profiled they needed some flattening of the round peg to fit into the groove. What surprised me was that they had no finish on them at all, they were just plain bare ash naked.

Best regards to all,


Lance

 

[Black_Fly]

Beautiful.

 

[LanceR]

Well, it only took eight months to finally get to Buffalo, New York and pick up the Mad River Northwoods. And we finally saw the now one year old granddaughter, a new to us 5 month old grandson and in a swing across Upstate New York we saw five of our six kids and their spawn and most of our siblings. It was a busy two weeks.

And the sixth kid, the youngest of our five sons, and his wife had their first baby two nights ago so a trip to Lancaster, PA is in the works. And maybe a detour to Mike M's place for a discussion (demonstration?) of Dynel skid plates is in order?

When my son and a nephew picked the Northwoods up the original plan was to hang it in the nephew's tall yard shed but it turned out that it wouldn't fit as he had added stairs to the second floor at one end. Some months later I found out that it was under a tarp on a wood pile in his yard. By the time I asked him to space the tarp up some so the canoe wouldn't have moisture build up under the tarp the woodwork had a good bit of staining. No biggie I guess as I was going to remove the inner and out gunwales and other woodwork to sanding and refinishing anyway. I suppose a date with a pail of oxalic acid solution to remove the stains is going to add a few days of drying time to the process.



The "*83" stickers are boat permits from Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. The round sticker is a "Friends of Algonquin Park" sticker. Very cool and I'll be trying to preserve them.









I can't speak to any maintenance done by the original owner but from what I'm reading Mad River used oil on the gunwales. No matter though as I'll be sanding them clean and using several coats of UV resistant spar varnish with special attention to the back sides of the gunwales and the hidden spots under the decks.

Many of the 1-1/4" stainless screws have their slot a little chewed up so I'll order a box of bronze screws from Jamestown or some such and replace all of them with bronze. And I don't know if the bolts through the gunwales at the bow and stern are original but as they show signs of bolt ends being cut off by hand with a hack saw, I doubt they are. If I determine that they are needed I'll do something a lot better looking as I get a rash just looking at them. There are carry handles under the deck plates which makes me wonder if they were original or added. The decks along with the funky bolts make me think the bow and stern were possibly spreading.

I'll reserve the decision on whether to refinish and web the seats, make new ones or buy new ones for later. The seats are both 12" from the floor so they will likely get lowered with new hangers in any case. I'll paddle it with the existing seat height first though. With a load the seat height might not be too high.

The boat doesn't feel like it weighs the 80 or so pounds I'd read it weighed online. I haven't put it on the scale yet but I suspect it's a good bit lighter than that (maybe the lows 70s?). And I want to add a good yoke to it. It's darned awkward to move by myself without one.






Comparing the 1979 Northwoods to our Wenonah Spirit II the Northwoods looks to have a lot more internal volume due to the deeper hull and the shape of the sides. Even though it's only 6-8" longer it just looks huge by comparison. The straps from our portage dolly fit the Spirit II fine and are too short for the Northwoods (one strap won't reach and one does by about 1/3") so I just ordered longer ones from my custom strap place. I'll set the two canoes side by side in the next few days for a picture....

Thanks for coming along on the saga of getting the canoe home. I'll post the pics of it next to the Spirit II soon. And so the saga continues on to a new chapter....restoration, enhancements and outfitting.........

EDIT: When I made the comment about the size compared to the Wenonah Spirit II the Northwoods was in our garage with my welding table and other clutter around it. Having gotten it back out in the open it still looks a little bigger than the Spirit but not as much as I had thought.

Best regards to all,


Lance