After all our sanding was done, we were lucky enough to get a wonderful artist to "paint" our canoe with concrete stain. He did a wonderful job, and with the final coats of sealer that were polished, our canoe is looking ready to win some competitions.

In keeping with the theme of our canoe this year, there is a rendition of "Old Ephraim" inside the canoe. There are also scenes from Cache Valley on the outside and the name, Old Ephraim, in block letters along the bottom of the canoe.

With the hours of paddling practice we have put in, we feel confident about competing this weekend and the ASCE Conference for the Rocky Mountain Region. We will do our best both in the competition and in representing our school as best we can. Go Aggies!!

After the canoe was done curing, we had to remove the foam mold from the canoe.

So we dug,

and dug, until all the foam was removed.

Then we gathered the foam into large garbage bags for recycling.

After the mold was removed, we sanded, and sanded, and sanded. We gradually worked our way to using finer sandpaper until the canoe was so smooth it glistened.

After the mold was constructed, we could then cast our canoe onto the form. This was a big project that took us about 4 hours to complete.

We measured, and mixed concrete.

Then, we put a layer on our mold.

A layer of mesh over the first layer,

another layer of concrete,

checking our dimensions,

and finishing.

Once this was all completed, we placed sheets on top to distribute the water from a sprinkling system overhead. The water from this helps create a stronger concrete. The canoe then cured for 28 days.

Next phase: Mold construction. The rules this year just require maximum dimensions for the canoe, so we tried a more streamlined shape than we had last year. This is how we constructed our mold:

We cut tin cross-sections.

We used the tin as a template for cutting foam sections.

We arranged our foam sections on a table.

We sanded the foam, and put putty on it and sanded some more.

We put a Styropoxy coating to keep the concrete from bonding with the foam.

After all of this, our mold was finally ready for concrete.

Do we look like scientists?

Tensile Test

Compression Test

Crushed Cylinder after compression

Float Test

Cylinder Molds

First step to building the canoe: Create a mix design. So we created some, made cylinders, tested the cylinders, and then created new mix designs. This process finally came to an end when we found a design that was light enough, but strong enough for our requirements.