Maine canoe builders with 100 years of combined experience working together to make wood and canvas

Video from NEWS CENTER Maine

Maine canoe builders with 100 years of combined experience working together to make wood and canvas

"The two men operate their own companies, but are teaming up to celebrate their 100 years of experience." from the video introduction

Maine’s top canoe builders team up to celebrate a “centennial”

"Two longtime friends in Atkinson are marking 100 years of combined experience building traditional cedar-and-canvas canoes by crafting one final boat together.

PISCATAQUIS COUNTY, Maine — For those who love traditional Maine canoes, the ones built the old way, from cedar and canvas, the small, unincorporated township of Atkinson in Piscataquis County might be the center of the universe.

This is where two young men who wanted to build those canoes came to live and work, close to fifty years ago. It's where they’re still working today, still creating sleek craft that glow in the sun, slide almost silently through the water as they have for a few hundred years.

“When you use the boat, it's different than a plastic boat,” Rollin Thurlow, owner of Northwoods Canoe, said. “It has a life of its own; the wood flexes and moves. It moves through the water much different than a plastic boat.”

The canoes are built of cedar ribs and planks, covered by canvas that is then sealed and painted. Thurlow and Jerry Stelmok, owner of Island Falls Canoe, learned to build them decades ago at the Washington County boat-building school in Lubec. They had met previously, the men say, because their wives were friends in college. After both served in the Navy, they reunited at the boat-building school. An instructor taught them how to build the traditional Maine canoes. Thurlow and Stelmok were able to acquire some old canoe-building forms that had belonged to the notable E.M. White Company, a highly regarded Maine canoe builder from earlier in the 20th century. With those and the lessons from the instructor, they started a business.

Their timing turned out to be right. It took a couple of years, they say, to get established, but a new generation was coming of age that wanted something other than aluminum or fiberglass canoes.

“People recognized them for what they were, and loved them, and had memories of them. And we were there,” Jerry recalled.

The two men would soon establish separate businesses, both in Atkinson, and orders began to flow in. Stelmok and Thurlow remained close friends and occasionally would step in to help each other when needed. Over those years, a lot of beautiful canoes have come from their shops.

Rollin Thurlow says he has built or restored about 1,200 of them. Jerry Stelmok says he has done about 1,000. Both have also welcomed students to spend a week or so building their own canoes, under the guidance of the master builders.

Both said they still find the finished products to be beautiful.

“The hardest part is sending the customer the bill,” Thurlow admitted. “I put it off and I put it off because I don’t want to let the canoe go. And once you send them the bill, it's like okay, now they’re taking it. No, I never get tired of looking at them.”

The latest one may prove harder to part with. After spending 50 years building canoes, the two friends have decided to build one more together, to mark 100 total years of experience—a kind of centennial canoe. It's based on a design by Thurlow. Besides elegant, gleaming wood and red-painted canvas, the top six inches or so of the hull will be painted with wildlife scenes by Jerry. He created a similar look for several canoes 25 years ago, to mark the Millennium.

This time, the builders said, it just seemed the right moment to celebrate all their years of building canoes, as well as the friendship that has lasted as long as the boats they create.

But when it's done, what then? Will they take a canoe trip?

“I don’t know,” Jerry said, “we haven’t thought about taking a trip. We might paddle in it, but then it will be sold.”

When I expressed surprise, he laughed.

“Get it out of here,” he chuckled.

It’s clear, however, that the project holds real meaning for the men. Both now in their mid-70s, they are still working at their craft, still teaching students, and still building canoes themselves.

They also have a new edition of a book they co-authored, The Wood and Canvas Canoe, which has a history of Maine canoe makers, as well as a guide on how to build them.

Jerry now even builds wood and canvas canoes for Old Town Canoe, which ceased building its own several years ago.

The work of those combined 100 years, the work that comes from their shops in this little town, has already stood the test of time, and that doesn’t seem likely to change. And some paddlers, they believe, will always want them.

“The wood and canvas boat seems to have the right feel to it in the water,” Rollin said.

“We have repaired boats 100 years old,” Jerry said.

What they have built should be on the waters of Maine and the country for many years to come." from the article: Maine’s top canoe builders team up to celebrate a “centennial”

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