It's a canard so your idea of balancing in front of the normal CG location is the right one.

The longer the wing to canard moment arm and the larger the canard area the more forward the CG should be. But definetly balancing on the spar is WAYYYYYY too far back.

At a guess and assuming that he made the canard too small just like the Wrights I'd say balancing at around 5% to 10% would be an excellent starting point.

A quick way to check this would be to make a simple little all sheet balsa glider. Make it to scale with about a 12 inch span from 1/16 sheet. Don't worry about an airfoil. Just leave them flat or sand in a bit of leading and trailing edge taper and call it good. Set the canard about 2 to 3 degrees positive compared to the wings. A simple stick of 1/4 square will do nicely for the fuselage and use a pylon of more 1/16 sheet for the wing spacer. By now you should be getting the idea.

Then go test fly it over some tallish grass and play with the balance point until it glides smoothly. Measure where it balances level when you hold it up by the top wing. Put the big one's balance point at the same % location. It should be stable or near stable at that point.