Bob Easton

Boatbuilding language includes terms and phases we don’t often hear. Some make sense once you understand their meaning. Others just need definition.

Take that long piece of fine Sitka spruce I bought a couple of weeks ago. It has lots of parts inside. All we have to do is get them out of the raw timber. A lot of boatbuilding is getting out parts. “Scantlings” is an archaic term for “small” and is used in nautical language both to talk of the dimensions of small structural components and of the components themselves.

One of the frequent activities of boatbuilders is making patterns. We have lots of dimensions on paper drawings that need to be transfered to our lumber. Sometimes we’re blessed with ful size drawings of components. Other times, we have to scale up from a drawing to full size, something called “lofting,” a topic for another day.  The Fiddlehead drawings contains one sheet with full size drawings for a few scantlings: the stems, parts for the frames, bulkheads, and carlin braces. Some of these need to be made in pairs, so it’s a good thing to make reusable patterns. I traced the drawings to thin plywood which I can carry to the lumber and draw around.

The spruce will be used for these parts and for a number of long thin parts. The long thin parts will remain inside a 13 foot section of the spruce for a while longer while I get these scantlings out of the remainder.

The first task is reducing thickness, from the rough sawn board to the desired thicknesses of 3/4 inch, 5/8 inch, and 7/16 inch. I reduced thickness first to 3/4 and got out the long part of the mid frame. Then reduced to 5/8 and got out the stems and carlin braces. Then, reduced to 7/16 and got out the rest of the mid frame pieces. Thickness reduction in some shops is done with power planers that use rapidly spinning knives. Thickness reduction in my shop uses hand planes. First, a Stanley #40 “scrub” plane that dates to about 1910 is used to scrub away material quickly. Its rounded blade can take fairly deep cuts and makes quick work when used diagonally across the lumber. A few passes up and down the lumber does the bulk of the work. When close to the desired thickness, I switch to the Stanley #5 “Jack (of all trades)” plane to smooth the marks left from the scrub plane. My jack plane dates to the late 1930’s and I keep it sharp enough to leave a surface that is very acceptable for framework. For the cases where the parts will be exposed and need fine finishing, follow up with a #3 smoothing plane (mid 1940’s heritage) brings the surface to baby butt smoothness.

When cutting the parts, I sometimes use one of the few power tools in my shop, the band saw and smooth the sawn edges with planes, rasps, or sometimes even sandpaper. The results are well made pieces, crafted with almost no dust.

An aside: as I read about people building workshops, one of the first things many woodworkers do is plan for powerful dust removal systems that attach hoses to every electric tool. Each of those tools works by pulverization that creates huge amounts of incredibly fine dust. Left uncaptured, the dust not only creates a mess, but more seriously many health hazards. Hand planes create no dust. Dust from band saws and rasps is large and heavy and usually falls quickly to the floor instead of lingering in the air. Sanding is something I minimize by keeping the planes sharp.

My tools are cheaper, and very much quieter, than all of the electric tools and a lot healthier to use. Instead of consuming electrons, my tools use a lot of human calories, giving me a good workout … and justification for a cool Coors, or maybe an occasional Snickers.

It’s been a long time getting started on Harry Bryan’s Fiddlehead decked canoe. A 1:16 scale model was a good preliminary project and served the purpose of learning how the boat goes together. Now, it’s time for the real thing.

Last week, I bought the first few boards, enough to get the framework and bottom together. Harry calls for spruce and Northern White cedar as the first choice lumber, but advises alternatives should those not be available. Northern White cedar is rather plentiful in Harry’s Nova Scotia and in Maine, but not here in New York. The closest Northern White I can find is at the far Eastern end of Connecticut, quite a long drive from here.

My closest supplier of any sort of cedar is Maurice L. Condon in White Plains NY, about 35 miles from here. M. L. Condon carries a kind of cedar they call Virginia White. It is actually a juniper and is also known as Atlantic White cedar. It has many of the same properties as Northern White, light in weight, excellent rot resistance, and good strength for its weight.

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect at Condon. Like most everyone, my lumber yard experiences are mostly at those places that sell construction lumber, the rough stuff we use for framing buildings. Condon is a specialty lumber seller. Most of their stock is hardwood, everything from oak and maple to exotics like purpleheart and ebony. Their softwood stock is also specialty woods such as the cedar I wanted, Western Red cedar, and Sitka spuce. Talk about feeling like the kid in the candy shop! M. L. Condon has what I need for this project, and lots more.

Not long after entering the yard, actually an open area surrounded by storage sheds (most all wood is sheltered from weather while being in open air), William came to help me. We had a short dscussion about what I wanted and he then used a fork lift to open up a stack of cedar and help me select some boards. I came away with four 16 foot long cedar flitches, a 20 foot long 6 inch wide board of sitka spruce and an 8 foot piece of Western Red cedar.

William fork lifted the order onto the truck rack that I recently built. The trip home was uneventful. Service at Condon was excellent, and I now have enough to get started.

Now a bit about the wood and its intended use.

The top piece in the stack is the Western Red cedar. It is the only piece that is surfaced four sides. It is a 2 by 6 of very straight grain, is milled vertical grain, and has a Greenland paddle inside.

That 20 foot long piece of Sitka spruce was too long to fit in my workshop, and has been cut to preserve the long lengths needed for the clamps, carlins, and rub rails. That board was not surfaced and measures a full 1 by 6 inches. This board is very clear, with only 4 small knots, none larger than the width of a pinky finger. It’s a beautiful piece of lumber that will provide key structural parts of the boat.

White cedars are sold as “live edge” flitches. They are rough cut, the result of running a complete tree through a saw, and what you get is boards that are four quarters thick and still have bark attached. The flitches up in Maine were 20 feet long. These are 16 feet long. The part of the lumber we use for boatbuilding is the heartwood, the center material with the reddish tint. We discard the lighter color sapwood at the edge because it still contains sugars and other semi liquids that are not as impervious to rot as the heartwood. These 12-14 inch boards will yield 8-10 inches of good material. The cedar is also quite clear, with fewer knots than I remember in the cedar we had at the Wooden Boat School in Maine. The bottom of the boat, the planking, and the decks are all cedar.

I’ll need to triple the size of that stack of lumber to make the full boat, but this is enough to get started. I’ve got wood!

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Some of the furniture I wanted for my new shop was a decent pair of sawhorses. I skipped the Workmate era a few decades back, and haven’t changed my mind since. I don’t want sawhorses that pretend (poorly) to be workbenches, and don’t actually work very well for sawing. Nor did I want the usual utility horses that are almost completely useless for sawing.

The answer that caught my eye was a sawbench designed by Christopher Schwarz, editor of Woodworking and Popular Woodworking magazines. It differs from the utility horse by having a broader top, a surface that can be used to hold lumber more firmly than on the edge of a two by four. A good sawbench supports a wide variety of hand sawing tasks. Christopher offers free construction drawings for a sawbench and a companion horse, both the same height

Christopher also conducts classes about constructing them.  Now, one would think that they’re pretty straightforward and may not need a class. That was my first thought, and not being near one of his class locations, I decided to set off on my own. That’s when I discovered a few of the things not covered on the drawings are:

• how everything is fastened together
• the best assembly sequence
• how to be really good at the joinery.

The first puzzle, fastening, was fairly simple, especially after seeing screws mentioned in a blog entry. I don’t know what Christopher uses, but I opted for #10 by 1 1/2″ countersunk screws. Assembly sequence sorted itself out, although I’m not sure I found the most efficient sequence. Got them together! The real enlightenment was about joinery. There are a dozen joins in each bench, each needing somewhat accurate sawing. Part way through the project, it dawned on me that those classes are really all about developing good hand sawing techniques, not about building sawbenches! The sawbenches were just fodder for sawing practice.

While I’m fortunate to be able to learn a lot of things on my own, classes can be invaluable in two regards. They can convey advice on how to master skills competently, and by necessity they’re full of the advice you never find in books: how to recover from mistakes. The absolute best thing about the class at Wooden Boat School was learning from mistakes, those I made and those I watched others make. In that sense, a class is a “mistakes concentrator” that packs plenty of learning into a short time.

Slogging on without that advice, my joins gradually improved. By trial and error I learned the correct stance, (as in the Using a Sawbench article), what workpiece positions worked best for specific types of cuts, and how to be more accurate. Since I had to discover those things on my own, the learning might stick, but I’m sure there are lots of things I didn’t learn.

As an aside, these horses were built using hand tools exclusively except for the curved rip notch which I cut with a band saw. The wood is Douglas fir, direct from the home center, hand planed down to the specified dimensions. All joins were hand sawn. Drilling and fastening was done with my 1896 Goodell-Pratt cordless drill.

The results are a pair of horses that work very well. Don’t look too closely at the joins. They’re good enough for this kind of project and the gaps will soon fill with sawdust.

The “Week 1″ post talks of the school itself and what we are covering in the “Fundamentals of Boatbuilding” course. This post is more about the rest of life at the school.

Driving here from New York, I saw the “Welcome to Maine” sign which included the slogan “The Way Life Should Be.” I’m not sure I am experiencing that particular life, but this is what it is like at WoodenBoat School.

Nearly 600 people pass through the school each summer. The school’s staff seems to be remarkably small and incredibly well tuned to people’s wants and needs. Rich, the “Director,” is one of those people who learns everyone’s name instantly. He doesn’t appear to “direct.” He does, and does almost anything. One morning this week at 5:30 AM I found him outside the boat shop hooking a trailored boat to a pickup to haul to the waterfront. Every staff member I’ve met presents themselves as family and works hard to make everyone feel at home.

The general atmosphere is one of respect, honor and trust. For example, if you’re a guest and want to have lunch, sign up on the lunch sheet. Your meal will be delivered to the boat shop, as are all the rest, and you can pay for it by remitting cash in an envelope found beside the sign-up sheet. The envelopes are on the honor system and collected occasionally.

The town of Brooklin is about 650 people, and as far as I can tell has a general store, one small cafe and two bed and breakfast style Inns. The school is located pretty far down a peninsula on Naskeg road. Naskeg is an old “Native American” word that means “cellphone don’t work here.” Actually, right at the crest of the campus where the gravel road heads down to the waterfront, there is a “Slow” sign. That sign is apparently a cellphone antenna device of some sort. People go there to make phone calls. The other place to make cell calls is from a widow’s walk atop one of the residence buildings.

It’s about the same for Internet service too. Neither of the residence buildings have Internet service. There is WIFI service at the WoodenBoat Store. I sit on a bench outside the store. When the store is open, the store manager always invites people to sit inside and use the WIFI service. I’ve found that doing that tends to heat up the plastic in my wallet, so I stay outside.

There is a student residence up near the general store, the Mountain Ash Student House. That building and the smaller Farmhouse near the boat shop provide rooms for students. They are simple rooms. Students double up. Room and board are quite reasonable and the food is very good. Don’t expect fancy, but expect to be satisfied with tasty and plentiful. Don’t expect heat either. The buildings are lightly heated (emphasis on lightly). After all, the school is open during summer months. The other 47 continental states have summers which include warmth. For Maine, don’t pack sandals or shorts; bring more long sleeves.

There are three large sections in the boat shop. Currently, each of the classes in session uses one of those big sections. I’m not sure how they divide up space when more classes are running concurrently. Just in back of the shop is a lumber room that is well stocked with the kinds of wood that make boatbuilders drool. Fortunately, there’s enough sawdust on the floor to sop up the drool. Beyond that is a room full of power tools, big power tools. The band saw could probably resaw railroad ties. The table saw is one of the state-of-the-art “SawStop” models. The planer is a 24 inch model and the jointer is also industrial strength. All are available for any of us to use.

The school has a waterfront which sits in a wide cove on Eggemoggin Reach. By the way, a Reach is a section of water upon which the prevailing winds allow a sailing vessel to traverse the length of the Reach in either direction without need for tacking. One of those directions might actually be a sailing reach, where a baot sails its fastest before the wind. The school keeps quite a few small boats, from small rowing dinghies, to single mast sail boats (prams, skiffs, Havens, H 12.5s, etc.), up to a two stick Mackinaw boat. All are available for student use after classes in the evening and on Saturdays.

The school is very strong on safety, strong meaning good briefings and expectation of good behavior. They warn and instruct, but do not hover and meddle. They have a great safety record with no serious shop injuries in all these years and fewer capsizes than can be counted on one hand.

If you are considering attending, you are very likely to have a very good time as long as your expectations focus on the classes, the boating, and for the friends you will make. If you absolutely must have the best in accommodations, maybe you belong at the Cipriani instead.

The center of the universe for people interested in wooden boats is Brooklin Maine. Don’t let anyone else fool you. The people in Brooklin will set you right. Brooklin is a little place on Maine’s central coast with a winter population of about 650 people. The WoodenBoat magazine, and others, is published from Brooklin. Nearby are 7 to 9 (depends on who counts) thriving boat shops, many of them building mostly with wood.

The magazine has been operating the WoodenBoat School for 27 years. The school manages 99 courses over the duration of the summer months. Most courses are one week, with a few running two weeks. I’m attending the ever popular two week “Fundamentals” of Boatbuilding” course, which runs 5 times each summer. Course instruction rotates among several highly respected wooden boat builders, each teaching one or more iterations each year. The instructor for my iteration is Greg Rössell, who builds with traditional techniques and operates a sole proprietorship boat shop in Troy, Maine.

Greg promotes traditional boatbuilding. That means using traditional materials, local wood varieties, and traditional building techniques … as opposed to building epoxy embalmed boats, or tortured plywood boats. I can see the course curriculum following fairly close to the material in Greg’s books, “Building Small Boats” and “The Boatbuilder’s Apprentice.” It doesn’t take long to recognize expertise, and Greg has it. He also has an entertaining style, always a bonus.

I’ve read Greg’s books and magazine articles for several years and have what I think is a good general understanding of what he teaches. What I lack is practical experience, and more importantly, knowledge of what to do when things don’t go exactly according to plan. That’s where this course excels. We get some time for practical hands on work, but more of the time is Greg’s instruction, and that instruction includes a tremendous amount of information about other ways of doing things and how to recover from things gone wrong.

The typical day is part instruction and part hands on work. Most days, the work is the lesser part of the time. Instruction, not step-by-step “do this - do that,” is explanation and demonstration of techniques. We’re swimming in information and taking every opportunity to get all of our curious questions settled. The course follows the logical progression of building a boat: materials, woods, fastenings, glues, understanding lines and drawings, lofting, setting up building molds and other jig parts, setting up stems keels and transoms, planking, joinery, spar making, and on and on.

Sometimes a colleague stops by. That’s Maynard Bray, frequent WoodenBoat author, standing by the “powerpoint display device.”

We are working on two boats and will complete neither. One is a Chaisson semi-dory. The other is a Whitehall. Each offers unique building lessons.

The Chaisson, being basically a dory has a flat bottom and lapstrake planking. It is built upside down over four molds and has light frames bent into it after planking is complete. Planks fasten to each other, mostly with copper rivets. It is called a semi-dory because it has a transom that is broader than most dories and has lines that make the hull more rounded than most dories. It’s a very pretty small boat. The one we have in the shop is partially planked and will be off the molds and turned over next week.

The Whitehall is a round bottomed boat that is carvel planked. It is built upside down over its frames. The frames are bent over ribbands supported by molds. The jig is substantially more complex than the one used for the Chaisson. Planks fasten directly to the frames with screws. Ours is called a “baby” Whitehall because it is shorter than most. Yet, it is not so short as to make it look bad. It has very sweet lines. It wants to have 10 planks per side and currently has 4 on one side and 3 on the other. Lots of work remains and we won’t see it fully planked.

One of our work sessions this week was spiling and getting out a plank. Spiling is thought to be some form of black magic. At least that’s what it sounds like when reading about it. Actually, it is only two parts black magic and one part semi-Euclidiean geometry. Take 48 measurements per pank. Find a suitable piece of wood. Transfer the 48 measurements. Connect the dots, very smoothly of course, and that’s spiling. Then get the plank out of the wood by removing all parts that are not plank, and affix it to the boat. Simple! It took my partner Paddy and I about 8-9 hours to spile, get out, and hang our first plank. We learned lots, about 17 tricks and 38 pitfalls. Greg’s reaction was, “Women and children will squeal with delight.” We’re not sure he was talking about the plank.

Other hands on tasks this week included making two new transoms, making a new Chaisson bottom, making a new Chaisson stem. All of these were for the next boats, not the current ones. There were also a variety of “fix this” activities.

Maybe it’s the students who should squeal with delight. There is universal agreement that it was a very good week.

New York City, a mere 35 miles from here, is the center of the universe. Or, so you would think if you were a Wall Street wizard, or a Broadway performer. If you’re a wooden boat builder, you are outside of any respectable lumber yard’s delivery radius. “Sure, we got it. Come pick it up buddy!”

Being a homeowner who fixes stuff, I already own a pickup truck. Simple, add a rack and go to the lumber yards. Whoa, have you seen the price of utility racks? An affordable answer is in an article from Workbench Magazine. It outlines a utility rack that’s plenty substantial enough for my occasional use and comes in at about one third the cost of pre-built racks. The ladder in the picture is 12 feet long, the same size as the boat I’ll be building.

The astute observer now knows why I was cutting bevels.

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