Ranger 15

Product Description

The 15-foot Ranger is a pocket-sized Prospector canoe design from Bear Mountain Boats.

The Prospector is a classic wilderness canoe shape, popular for its load-carrying capacity and manouvrability in white water. The Ranger 15 has the same end shape and highly-rockered keel line as the Prospector 16. With a flattened shallow arch bottom and full ends, the Ranger is stable, strong and a good load carrier. If you are looking for a canoe in the fifteen foot range with some history and good all-round paddling characteristics, this might be the one you are looking for.

The Ranger canoe is constructed using the strip-planking method and sheathed in fibreglass for a light and strong hull without internal ribs.

Ted Moores of Bear Mountain Boats is the author of Canoecraft, the standard reference book for wood-strip canoe building. The book is recommended to accompany the kit or plans. It is packed with tips and techniques and has inspired countless first-time canoe builders around the world.

We currently have a ready-built Ranger 15 canoe for sale in our showroom (the same boat shown in the video below).

Length

4.57 m (15′)

Maximum beam

895 mm (35⅕″)

Beam waterline

855 mm (33.7″)

Beam gunwale

850 mm (33½″)

Bow height

560 mm (22″)

Centre depth

345 mm (13½″)

Displacement

170 kg (375 lb)

Optimum capacity

68-204 kg (150-450 lb)

Draught

100 mm (4″)

Wetted surface

2.49 m² (26.8 sq ft)

Weight to immerse

132 lb/in

Prismatic coefficient

0.550

Weight

20.5-25 kg (45-55 lb)

Keel

Keel-less or shoe keel

Watch us build a Ranger 15 in this one-minute overview video:

Kit

We manufacture our kits to the highest standard using European-grown Paulownia for the planking strips. Uniquely, the strips in our Bear Mountain Boats kits have not only a bead-and-cove profile but also a pre-cut finger joint at each end, making the neat joining of strips even easier for builders at home.

The kit includes:

• Plans
• Instructions booklet
• CNC-cut building forms
• Paulownia strips with bead-and-cove edges and finger joints on both ends
• Ash blanks for decks
• Ash stem strips
• Ash gunwales (inwales and outwales) with scarf joints machined for joining
• Ash thwart
• Cane seats
• Waterproof glue for the strips
• Epoxy resin and activator
• Dispensing pumps
• Digital scales
• Epoxy fillers
• Woven glass fabric on a roll
• Free technical support from a competent builder

Please note that the kit does not include the box beam strongback for mounting the building forms on. You can either use a straight length of suitable timber or order the box-beam strongback we supply.

What else do I need?

Strongback

This strongback is made up of CNC-cut MDF panels that fit together to form a strong and stiff box beam measuring 200 mm × 200 mm and long enough to build the boat. You'll need a pair of trestles or sawhorses to raise it to a comfortable working height.

Plans and Instructions (not required by kit purchasers)

The plans contain sufficient information to make it possible to build the boat from scratch rather than a kit. The plans are printed in colour and include scale plans and full size drawings for all the forms.