Hi Peter,

Welcome to the fray. Yes, you can ask about canoes and a bunch of us have also built one.

SNIP
: I saw a message posted somewhere from a guy who said he built a red cedar
: strip canoe in 80 hours, including the time to build the strongbacks. Is
: that possible? I see people talking about anywhere from 250 to 500 hours
: for many of the kayaks I see here.

80 hours would be possible, especially if the desired result was just getting something workable on the water. It might be hard to do anything special or pretty in that amount of time.

Getting it done in 80 hours would probably take some experience with either working with wood or with fiberglass/epoxy or both. That would be a more likely time for a second or third boat, instead of a first boat as well. Doing the job in 80 hours is also a lot more likely with a kit with presawn strips than from scratch.

I would not recommend entering the project with the goal of getting it done in 80 hours. You might get done that quickly, but if you are constantly worried about the hours, you could skip out on much of the fun of building your own canoe.

There will likely be days when it feels better to just sit in the shop looking at the strips on the forms than gluing more on. Those days will go better if you do not have a budget of available hours.

Rick