sailorbenjamin

Might be vintage. Gotta be a classic. I found a small pile of canoes behind one of the buildings at work a while ago and made some inquiries. There was a guy doing some programs but he's been gone for years. I quit last week and they said I could take one as a going away present.
The groundhogs had filled this one with dirt and made a bit of a home in it till it started raining back in April or May. When it finally quite last week it was chock full of mud. But it's not got too many dents and no patches. So we rolled it over, hosed it out and threw it on the car.
I had an Old Town canoe for a while. I sent the serial number to the factory and they sent me a copy of the original build sheet, each step in the manufacture process initialed by the employee, what color it was and the name and address of the lady who bought it in 1927.
Grumman has no records at all. It was built in Marathon, NY so it was after 1952 when they moved the factory from Long Island and it's the old Grumman serial number format so it's pre 1984 when they adopted the national standardized format. 1538-g-5-17, so from what I've gleaned, it's a 17 footer, made of .05" aluminum, #1538 of batch G. The G seems to be datable to the 1960s but they didn't change much from 1945 till now so who cares? I read somewhere they've made a half a million of them.
So I can no longer show my face at the Wooden Canoe Heritage Association forum but my kids will get to mess about in this one instead of watching daddy scrape old varnish for the forseable future. And besides, how many Old Town products were shot into space?
Cripes, you guys are gonna want pictures. My camera's down. Anyone out there not know what an old gray Grumman looks like? Anyone got some picts they could help me out with?

IthaDan 

I always figured grumman took the alumimum sheetmetal tooling from ww2 plane construction and rolled it over to make canoes and stepvans. If there's any truth to that, I'd bet you'd be pretty hard pressed to find one older than 1945.

I have one. They're getting rarer, but they're rather common in upstate NY. There are probably 300k of them in the adirondack park alone.

spacemanz

Well, if it's good enough for the groundhogs, it ought to be good enough for you too. When I was around 11 or 12, we had an aluminum fishing boat, with a 7 1/2 HP motor. It was actually pretty decent for on Lake Erie, but certain parents can get a little paranoid.

Gary Fountain

Very interesting and, yes, I need photos.

dveneman

I'll bet the ride is pretty harsh. Steel is real man.

Lascauxcaveman 

Wood is good.

wahoonc

We had a Grumman back in the 70's, somewhere around 1980 it came off the truck at highway speeds and ended up in a scrap yard I got a 17' Old Town royalex for replacement, sold that to a buddy a few years later. Have all the bits and pieces to build a cedar strip canoe...just need time and shop space.


Aaron

gomango

You can't shake a stick without hitting a Grumman in Ely, Mn.

We spend a lot of time in this area each summer.

It is on the edge of the BWCA and many outfitters in the area still issue Grummans.

That and a roll of duct tape to fix the holes that rooks poke in the hull when they hit rocks in the middle of nowhere.

Of course, I've never done that.

Congrats on your acquisition.

Don't forget decent paddles, learn your j-stroke and a decent flotation device.

I'll take pics of ours next time I'm up, but this is what these look like.

lenA

us canoe snobs call 'em alumaboomers :-)

David Newton

I spent many hours of my youth in my friend John's Grumman that he bought new in '68.
After falling in love with a green canvas covered Old Town at the Scout camp, the Grumman seemed stark and soul-less, but it was fast.

k_randomfactor

Get an old MTB, remove the wheels, strap it down amidships.

Sounds like a killer weekend camping trip.

Trick fall

Grew up across the street from Grumman on LI so there were a lot of these around. Havent seen one in ages though.

oddjob2

Around my ADK camp, in the background, these Adirondack guideboats are more common than Grumman canoes, the staple of every child's summer camp experience

gomango

Incredibly beautiful!

Quite stable as well.

Bet they track just right.

Be a dickens to portage in the BWCA though.

That's one of the best features of a Grumman, its light carrying weight.

......and yes, they are quick.

rhm

I have one, also a 17' one, that my family bought new in about 1973. We had it in DC, took it on trips to the Adirondacks and the Algonquin, them used in a little pond in Virginia for years, occasionally on the Patomac. Now it's back on Long Island near where it was made, and we paddle around the area between the Great South Bay and Moriches Bay. I tow it around with an old MTB, using an inverted baby jogger as its wheels.

Popeyecahn

We had a Grumman as a kid in Mpls, had it stowed at Lake Harriet during the MTM years. Almost lost it on the St Croix once when it got away and went for a trip downstream on a school camping trip. Oof Da!

kroozer 

When I was a kid we had a beautiful, light, lithe, kayak my dad built from a kit. It had a wooden frame covered with canvas. Of course it was much more poetic than any metal craft but you couldn't look at it without puncturing the hull. We were always patching that stupid kayak. Then we got a Grumman canoe. My dad is an ex-Navy pilot and used to fly Avenger's and Guardian's off of aircraft carriers, so I'm sure he liked the idea of owning a Grumman. It is an indestructible beast that requires virtually no maintainance. Just pull it out of the woods in the spring, rinse it off and go look for the paddles. My dad still has it after something like 40 years.

Chombi

When we were kids my brother and I had lots of fun when we borrowed my Uncle's aluminum Grumman canoe to use on small lakes and creeks we went to every summer off from school in Northern Wisconsin. It was really fun jerry rigging sails made out ouf bed sheets our mom gave us and sailing the canoe around the lakes, using or paddles as rudders and keels. It was really heavy though when we had to porter the canoe through the woods when we get blocked by beaver dams on the creeks.... We always wondered if the later plastic canoes from Coleman would have been much lighter and easier to handle on land, but we didn't think the Colemans look as cool as the Aluminum Grummans...

gomango

No, the Colemans are tanks.

I know, I have one.

We use it on the Mississippi River to fish for Smallies and Walleyes!

They are indestructible though.

gomango

Our kids sail on Lake Harriet!

Small world.

Popeyecahn

Indeed, it's a great lake for sailing etc. An old school mate is listed on a placard in the bandshell (at least I saw it there in '94...) for some racing wins or some such. Used to live up 43rd on Garfield, a writer for NPR lives in our old house. Great place to have grown up in for sure!

oddjob2

An XL tub of Mother's Aluminum Polish, followed by clearcoat, would be awesome!

Popeyecahn

You're forgetting the random orbital! To hell with elbow grease lol

I'm digging that motor on the back, we had one similar but it apparently fell off into the depths of Mille Lacs!

JohnDThompson 

I paddled one of those all over the BWCA and Quetico backin the 70s...

oldskoolwrench

Grumman makes good stuff. I have a Wildcat, Hellcat, a Tigercat and Tomcat in my hangar, and they work very nicely. The Tigercat gets kinda twitchy on Final, though. Can't forget about the Widgeon, too!
Oh yeah... they also built something called the LEM.

BTW...

Wildcat: F4F-4
Hellcat: F6F-3
Tigercat: F7F
Tomcat: F-14
Widgeon: G-44
LEM: Lunar Excursion Module

Just some other things Grumman had a hand in building over the years...