Core Skills: Fitting Out Small Boats

This is a six-day course ending Saturday

The joinery work of a small boat is particularly exacting because there is nowhere to hide slipshod work —no burying rough joints under decks or in cabinetry. This course is designed to teach you how to make elegant parts and tight-fitting joints that will finish out a boat in style.

Many of the skills and techniques you acquire can be transferred to big boats as well. Your instructor will start the week describing how to organize a project as complicated as fitting out a boat. Students will learn how to work from boat plans and drawings. Your instructor will explain the versatility of various types of patterns and show you how to make them, as well as how to use them. You will learn about making curved parts and intricate interior fittings. Your instructor will demonstrate methods for measuring and layout in the hull to accurately position interior parts and pieces. They will also explain how to accurately scribe and fit parts such as the breasthook, quarter knees, thwarts, and risers. You will learn how to use epoxy, other glues and bedding compound; and to become familiar with woodworking in three dimensions with no right angles in sight.

* There is room for one or two students boats to be used in this course. Please contact us if you are interested.

Core Skills is a curriculum designed to complement and expand on our Fundamentals of Boatbuilding class. Each class in the Core Skills curriculum is focused on one core element of traditional small-boat construction. Our inaugural offering includes topics such as planking, setting up a building jig, and fitting out a boat. While these topics are covered as a portion of Fundamentals of Boatbuilding, Core Skills offers dedicated, weeklong exploration of each of them. Core Skills classes also offer hands-on learning of many of the topics introduced in our Mastering Skills video series. Students may take any or all of these classes in whatever order best suits them.