Student Noah Sturdy demonstrates how to caulk a boat seam. Wikipedia: “Traditional caulking (also spelled calking) on wooden vessels uses fibers of cotton and oakum (hemp fiber soaked in pine tar). These fibers are driven into the wedge-shaped seam between planks, with a caulking mallet and a broad chisel-like tool called a caulking iron.The caulking is then covered over…
Instructor Bruce Blatchley’s class turns their Drascombe Longboat. Students are Rw Barrett, Eric Kay, John Sandoval and Chuck Garrett. Nice work guys! This boat is being built for a youth boating program led by the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) in Baja, Mexico. They currently have a fiberglass fleet of Drascombes. This wooden one should be lighter, stiffer and…
Construction of the 36-foot motor sailor SEA BEAST under the direction of Instructor Ben Kahn is moving right along. Here, the stem rabbet is being cut by student Jeff Lydston. The wood is purple heart – here are excerpts from Wikipedia about the wood: “Peltogyne, commonly known as purpleheart, amendoim or amaranth, is a genus of 23 species of…
Press Release April 15, 2014 Port Hadlock — The Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding announces the Ann Davison Memorial Scholarship, developed specifically to support women pursuing a career in the maritime trades. Ann Davison was the first woman to solo sail across the Atlantic Ocean. Her boat, the Felicity Ann, is owned and being repaired by the Northwest School…
The Grandy Boat Company was formerly located on Lake Union in Seattle, and made many hundreds of boats both large and small during a long tenure there from the early 1920’s to 1967. Here’s a good web page about the company and it’s boats: home.comcast.net/~btse1/grandy/grandymainpage.htm Our students build these boats to lines and documentation taken by former instructor Tim…
The Light McKenzie River Boat, as it is traditionally known, is described in detail in Roger Fletcher’s book “Drift Boats and River Dories”, published by Stackpole Books in 2007. The book’s ISBN is 0-8117-0234-0 . Roger Flectcher’s website is www.riverstouch.com . The McKenzie river flows west out of the Cascades Mountains in central Oregon and terminates north of Eugene…
Andrew McGilvra caulks a Davis boat. www.nwswb.edu Davis Boats were developed as inshore fishing boats for use in Southeast Alaska by John Davis, a Tsimshian Indian, in the late 1800’s. He observed the boats used by American and Canadian vessels transiting through the area, and believed he could build better boats more suited to his area. He made his…
Video by Zachary Simonson-Bond. Lignin From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia This article is about the wood polymer. – Lignin or lignen is a complex polymer of aromatic alcohols known as monolignols. It is most commonly derived from wood, and is an integral part of the secondary cell walls of plants The term was introduced in 1819…
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) asked the Boat School to build three traditionally-built Whitehalls as replicas of the boats used by John Wesley Powell and his group of explorers during their first-ever descent of the Colorado River in 1869. The BBC will film a reenactment of the voyage later in 2013. The School is building one 16-foot Whitehall, the…
Incredible bending of white oak ribs at Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding in Port Hadlock, Washington. Video by Luane Hanson. Lignin From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia This article is about the wood polymer. Lignin or lignen is a complex polymer of aromatic alcohols known as monolignols. It is most commonly derived from wood, and is an integral part of…
Stay up-to-date with what's happening at the Boat School.
Founded in 1981, the school offers a full-time 12 month Associate of Occupational Studies (AOS) degree in Boatbuilding, a 9-month Diploma program in Marine Systems, and 5-day Intensive courses in Marine Systems topics.
