From Workbench to Waterline... Does Anybody Build the Real Deal?

[MThomas]

We all love building our models, but I’m curious. Just how many of you have also built, or considered building a full-sized wooden boat? Something you can sit in, row, or even sail!
Whether it’s a canoe, a dory, or something larger... I'd like to know who’s actually ventured beyond the small workbench, or plans to do so... and just what are you interested in building, have in work, or have already built?

 

[Jim Fortnam]

Oh, well, I fit that description. ‘Furniture’ is more my main thing, but I can reach back to my great grandfather’s ship models. I call them caricatures because they are whittled and not accurate, and not to a scale, but I’ve known them for my lifetime, and they just ooze charm.
Ship’s captain who was, apparently, a disciplinarian. He took my Grandfather to Canada, and as he was the Captain’s boy, the family story goes that he had no favours, and swore never to go to sea again.

Later discovered in New Zealand though, and there were TH TH no flying machines back then, so maybe he just chose another ship with a different master.

Jim

Oops, should maybe have mentioned that my skills with wood sucked me into a local initiative to do some 1:1 scale building, using volunteers with no skill, in a disused traction engine shed.

 

[Roger Pellett]

The photo below shows the first full sized boat building project that I was “involved with.” It is an L. Francis designed Prudence or H23. My father finished the boat in 1949 and we sailed it on Lake Erie. ( I’m the short guy!)

Age 13. My father and I built one of the very first Sunfish Sailboats. The original Sunfish were wooden, POB, plywood decks and mahogany sides.

Age 16-17 After selling the Sunfish we bought a kit to build a wooden Thistle Class sailboat. The hull was a moulded mahogany plywood shell with (real) mahogany interior; a beautiful boat. I sailed this boat on Silver Lake and raced it on Turkey Foot lakes in Ohio and on the Potomac River, Washington DC.

After moving to Duluth, MN in 1990 I became interested in canoes. I first built a one man Tom Hill designed glued lapstrake canoe.

I then rebuilt/restored four wood canvas canoes:

A Shell Lake freight canoe with National Forest Service markings on the keel.
A 1916 Old Town Charles River
A 1944 Old Town OTCA
A no name supposedly built by First Nation boat builders in Quebec
Each of these canoe projects required replacement of ribs, planking and re-canvassing.

We have a community Sailing Association here in Duluth that receives donated boats. I have been involved in numerous repair projects to return these to service.

Roger

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