Patching Boy Scout canoes on Maine’s Allagash River in the mid-1960s was ROLLIN THURLOW’s first successful canoe-building experience--successful, but not very graceful! After graduating from Maine Maritime Academy and a tour in the Navy, Rollin attended the wooden boat building program at Maine’s Washington County Vocational Technical Institute. His interest lead him to collaborate with Jerry Stelmok to start their own wooden canoe building company. While wooden canoes have had a long history, Rollin and Jerry discovered that there was precious little written about the actual how-to construction of the canoes. The canoe company became a real reinventing-the-wheel type of project—long on desire but short on capital and business skills, leading to the demise of the original company. But it was not long before with renewed interest and skills, Rollin started his own company, the Northwoods Canoe Company. Co-authoring with Jerry the book the Wood and Canvas Canoe ensured that the how-to and historic information they had collected would become available to the public at large. Since its publication in 1987, it has become the bible for wood-and-canvas canoe building.

Rollin has taught canoe building and restoration at a variety of locations throughout the U.S. and at WoodenBoat School since the late 1980s. Building a variety of his own designs plus historic reproductions, Rollin’s shop in the small town of Atkinson, Maine, the Northwoods Canoe Company, has become known as one of the premier wooden canoe shops for both restoration and new wooden canoes.