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Cutting the stem rabbet on 36-foot Chamberlin

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…

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Planking a Grandy Skiff!

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…

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Sea Trials for the Light McKenzie River Boat!

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…

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Caulking a Davis boat!

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…

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Point of View: Planking

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…

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Working on the BBC Whitehall (Chopping off bungs)

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…

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Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival-WA

Port Townsend’s Wooden Boat Festival is the most education-packed and inspiring wooden boat event in the world. Featuring more than 300 wooden vessels, dozens of indoor and outdoor presentations and demonstrations, a who’s who of wooden boat experts and thousands of wooden boat enthusiasts, there’s something to do, someone to meet, or a boat to board at every turn….

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Cliff Defying Conventional Laws of Nature

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…

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Students of NW School of Wooden Boatbuilding – a slideshow

Enjoy this short slideshow featuring students at the Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding! It’s always gratifying to feature the students at the Boat School as they are a lively, positive bunch of people who share an exciting passion for wooden boats. In this slideshow you will see things that are the common mark of inspiring schools everywhere – smiling…

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