By GEORGE ROGERS
of The Gazette
Byron Shaw made a name for himself in water research at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. Though retired from the faculty, he's still at it.
And, evidently unable to stay away from water, he's building canoes.
These aren't your everyday, low-budget canoes. They're handcrafted of cedar strips and he'll sell you a 15-footer for $2,000. Pretty steep? You can buy a kit from a company out east and make one yourself, but it'll cost you more than that just for the material and instructions.
And Shaw knows of someone who'll sell you a completed cedar-strip canoe for $1,000 a foot. Figure for yourself what a 15-footer would set you back.
Canoe-building is a hobby for Shaw, and a painstaking one.
How long does it take to make one? "Everyone asks that question," Shaw replied, and he has a hard time giving a solid answer because there is none. Up to now, at least, it's not something he's worked at steadily. He putters around, taking a break while waiting for glue to dry, doing other things and finally getting back to the canoe, maybe on another day. He thinks he could build one in 80 hours, maybe, if he really went at it.
Shaw's only been making a couple canoes a year. "I'm hoping that now that I have more time, I'll do more," he said, but mass production is not on the horizon.
His canoe factory, if that's the right word, is in a barn on his home property in the town of New Hope, north of Nelsonville.
Shaw, who retired from the faculty last June, makes 18-foot canoes and 15-footers. The 15-footer is of his own design and comes in two sections that you bolt together. Each section has a wall or bulkhead in the middle that keeps the water out. One of the sections is eight feet long and the other is seven feet. They nest together and they're easier to haul around the country than a conventional canoe. And they're light. Together, the two sections weigh 44 pounds.
The cedar strips are only 3/16ths of an inch thick and the canoes look frail, but they're coated inside and out with fiberglass and epoxy resin. "They're really pretty tough," said Shaw. And attractive. The coatings are transparent, so what you see is wood.
Shaw has been getting his white cedar from Ron Karch, who lives just east of Peru (the one in New Hope, not South America). He mixes in a little red cedar for color accent and buys it from local lumberyards. He has to choose carefully when buying cedar because it has to be free of knots, which would weaken the wood.
His gunwales are walnut, cherry is used for decking and ash goes into the cane seats. His 92-year-old father, who lives in Waunakee, used to do the caning until his vision deteriorated, and now Shaw does it.
You take the materials, the time, the equipment and the labor, which includes a huge amount of sanding, and Shaw's $2,000 price tag begins to make sense. Not to mention the patience required.
Shaw does other things with wood, like making canoe paddles and carving birds. In his home, some of his birds are displayed in a half-canoe which stands upright. You can also use his half-canoes for books or knick-knacks.
His 32-year career at UW-SP involved controversy because his research often stepped on toes, especially when dealing with pesticides. He trained a lot of people who are carrying on his work, and he created and headed the university's environmental task force program. He hasn't entirely abandoned the water protection field and he's still doing some "guest lecturing" at the university.