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Every year at the Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding we build an exciting lineup of boats for either commission or for speculation. This year our students have been building the:
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Hanson Forest Service Scaler Boat

Instructor: Ben Kahn

Photo Gallery

Commission Posting

This boat was designed by the American designer H.C. Hanson in 1957 for the US Forest Service as a Scaler’s Boat. Scalers determine the amount of board feet of lumber in each log cut by a timber crew. Three of these vessels were built commercially in the mid-1950’s to this design for the Forest Service for use in the western United States.

Under the direction of Instructor Ben Kahn, students at the School will continue construction on this boat during 2014.

The boat is 28 feet long with a beam of about 8 feet. It has a draft of four feet, and displaces about 4.5 tons.

Our boat is being built as a cruising vessel. It will be planked in aromatic port orford cedar from southern Oregon, over white oak frames. The house sides will be mahogany. The boat is driven by a 54 hp Yanmar diesel engine, and will be customized to the owner’s desire’s before delivery.

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Stephens/Waring Yacht Designed “Sentinel 24”

Instructor: Sean Koomen

Photo Gallery

Commission Posting

This is the first boat in the Sentinel-24 class of designed by Stephens/Waring Yacht Design of Belfast, Maine (SWYD) www.stephenswaring.com .

The Sentinel-24 class is designed to be a comfortable and stylish sloop with the beautiful lines of yesterday’s classics paired with modern underbody design and state-of-the art rigging.

This vessel represents Stephens Waring Yacht Design’s signature approach to distinctive, fun and high performance sailing with more than a touch of historic grace.
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Classic American Whitehalls

Instructors: Ben Kahn and Jeff Hammond

Photo Gallery

Commission Posting

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is contracting with the School for the construction of three traditionally-built Whitehalls to be built as replicas of the boats used by John Wesley Powell and his group 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 “Scout Boat”, and two 21-foot Whitehalls. Though Powell launched four Whitehalls onto the river in 1869, one was lost in rapids shortly after the descent began.

Whitehalls are the iconic American pulling boat.

 

Robert Perry 62′ Wood Composite Yacht “Sliver”

Instructor: Bruce Blatchley

Photo Gallery

Commission Posting

This 62-foot strip-planked day sailor was designed by the renowned designer Robert Perry for a client here in the Pacific Northwest. www.perryboat.com/

www.perryboat.com/page/bio

Bob Perry has been very pleased with the School’s progress on the boat, and has remarked more than once that he feels we are doing a superlative job on the construction.

The boat was built on molds cut by Turn Point Design in Port Townsend.turnpointdesign.com/

The hull is western red cedar sheathed in 24-ounce fiberglass. WEST System products have been used throughout the project. www.westsystem.com/ss/

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Lapstrake Sid Skiff

Instructor: Jeff Hammond

Photo Gallery

Video of Sea Trials

Commission Posting

Master Boatbuilder Ray Speck drew the lines for this classic Puget Sound small craft while working as a boatbuilder in Sausalito CA. Ray saw that the harbormaster, Sid Foster, was using a particularly sweet little 12′ 5″ lapstrake skiff to row around Richardson Bay.

Ray took the little skiff’s lines with Sid’s permission, and over time, developed them into a range of skiffs from 13 to 18 feet long. Ray estimates he’s built just about one hundred of these beautiful boats so far in his nearly 45 year career as a boatbuilder, many of them while teaching at the Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding. The Sid is an excellent sailor as well as a very nice boat to row. A rare combination.

Planked in red cedar, framed with white oak and trimmed with a combination of Honduras mahogany and Sapele this is the most recent of many built at the school.
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Davis Pulling Row Boat

Instructor: Jeff Hammond

Photo Gallery

Commission Posting

The Davis Pulling Row Boat is carvel planked. The Davis boats were built by a native family in Southeast Alaska. It is believed that they were modeled on the Pelagic Sealing Skiffs and ship’s boats. They were very popular and used in the hand trolling fishing industry of the early to mid part of the 20th century. The lines were taken from an orginial boat that is in the Center for Wooden Boat’s permanent collection in Seattle.
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Lapstrake Planked Grandy Skiff

Instructor: Jeff Hammond

Photo Gallery

Commission Posting

Grandy Skiff, lapstrake planked in western red cedar and framed in white oak.

The cross bars (called “cross spalls”) keep the boats shape against the press of the white oak frames until the interior is constructed. — at Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding.
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Plywood Bartender Work Boat

Instructor: Bruce Blatchley

Photo Gallery

During WWII George Calkins built boats for the war effort. After the war he began focusing on smaller plywood boats. Prams, rowboats, dories, runabouts, race boats, and cabin cruisers emerged from the CalkinsCraft shop at Delake, OR (now Lincoln City).

Over a ten year period George built over 1,000 plywood boats. Besides being successfully built and used by recreational boaters all over the world, BARTENDERS have been used extensively in Australia by harbor patrols, state police, and Australia’s famous surf rescue teams. Several oil companies have utilized the BARTENDER in the offshore oil industry to get them through rough sea conditions that most other small craft would not handle.

The Bob Perry-designed yacht, “Sliver,” was picked up today and is on her way to Seattle where her mast will be installed and the finishing work will be completed. Sliver was a three-year Contemporary Wood Composite Boatbuilding project that touched the lives of many of our students.

We would like to thank everyone who was involved in her construction, especially Instructor Bruce Blatchley and his crew – Fred Shwiller, Jordan Primus, Kai Lorenz, Cooper Parish, Troy Craig and Amos Howe.

Nice job guys – you have much to be proud of. Good luck as you all launch further into your boat building careers! We will miss you. Please stay in touch!

Click here for more photos about Sliver.

In boats made here, the BBC will repeat an incredible river expedition!

By Brian J. Cantwell

Seattle Times outdoors editor

A new TV documentary about John Wesley Powell’s famed exploration of the Grand Canyon has come to Washington for authentic — if ill-suited — wooden watercraft.

LONG BEFORE any modern-day, quinoa-gobbling Californian had the notion, John Wesley Powell may have been the first nonnative to advance the concept of sustainability in the American West. As an early director of the U.S. Geological Survey, he fought — unsuccessfully — to curb the 19th-century homesteading frenzy until the government could ensure there was enough water to go around (which there wasn’t).

However, the one-armed Union Army veteran’s big claim to fame was an adventure in which he brought a pocketknife to a gunfight. So to speak.

What he brought was a handful of alarmingly ill-suited wooden boats on the first recorded exploration of the Grand Canyon’s wild rapids…

And there’s a Northwest connection. The BBC commissioned the Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding, in Port Hadlock, Jefferson County, to construct for the program three replicas of Powell’s boats.

Click here for PDF of the article (the Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding has paid a fee to the newspaper for this PDF distribution).

Read the entire Seattle Times article.

See a screen shot below of the Seattle Times online with a photo of student, Gina Bonneau, working on the Whitehalls.

This year’s Contemporary Wood Epoxy Program students did a fine job building the Sentinel’s hull and deck. After a couple final details in the boat’s cockpit construction, it’s on to laying the teak deck. With a mast delivery in mid-July and sails being sewn as we speak, the excitement for this year’s Wooden Boat Festival is really starting to rev up! Stayed tuned for more details on the 24’s construction this summer.

The launch for the BBC’s Whitehalls was a great success on June 13, 2013. Three Whitehalls were launched – two large and one smaller. The two large Whitehalls were built in the boat shop of Instructor Ben Kahn with students:

Gina Bonneau
Noah Flegeall
Chris Brobst
Asa (TBD)
Shawn Huston
Patrick Carlisle
Sam Hunt
Mark Stuber

Instructor Jeff Hammond led construction on the smaller red Whitehall with students:

Paul Lyter
Zach Simonson-Bond
Masaki Tobahashi
Randy Roberts
Steve Stanton
Carey Anderson
Griffin Myers
Dan Bramberger
Jeremy Nugent

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. Good luck on the trip and we hope that these beautiful boats serve this project well!

Congratulations on your success, students!

The 2013 Contemporary Wood Composite students move closer to finishing the Sentinel 24. Here are a couple photos of the completed deck frame and completed subdeck installed!

The cockpit was constructed in a separate area from the boat and then lifted into the deck beams. The boat will be finished with teak laminated to the sub deck.

Students have been making impressive progress on this boat – we are proud of their accomplishments.

I don’t believe that I could ever get tired of framing boats. It seems like the boat just appears in front of you. Of course it doesn’t. There has been a lot of work to get to this point. We have spent hours lofting, making molds, fitting and bolting the back bone together, but this is when it all comes together. You slather linseed oil and turpentine on the frames and get the steam box rolling. For a few hours you’re bending oak. It never ceases to amaze me how oak gives itself up to the bend. Then, at the end of the day, the shape you have been thinking about for months is there in front of you. Everything you do from this point just makes the boat come more alive. Now we move on to planking.

This year (2013) we started the second Forest Service Scaler’s boat designed by H.C. Hanson in 1957. To see us building the first Hanson, click here.

The U.S.F.S. used these boats to get the scaling crews to the log rafts at remote harvest sites. Their job was to determine the volume, or “scale” of the timber; A scaler would measure each log, identify the species and deduct for defects to estimate the amount and quality of lumber in it. The scalers would tie up their boats to the log rafts and, wearing their cork boots, they would walk the rafts measuring and grading the logs in the water.

These boats were designed as rugged sea boats, built to serve in coastal waters of the North Pacific.  Hanson had a great eye for work boats, and these have the classic lines of the Northwest work boats that he is famous for. The first boat we built never failed to draw a crowd.

I slightly re-designed the second boat; Stretching it to 28′ 6″ and adding a foot of beam. I also carried the beam further aft increasing beam at the transom. I did change a few of the construction details, most notably by widening the harpins so I could set the house on the deck. This will allow us to build the house off the boat next year.

-Tim Lee

This classic Pacific Northwest design is from the board of George Calkins, and was drawn in 1963. It was the biggest of the Bartender class, which was designed for the rough surf off Washington and Oregon’s Pacific coast. The design was so successful that it was accepted by the U.S. Coast Guard for use as its surf rescue boat.

We are building this boat with a mid-section stretched 16 inches – one frame bay – to yield a design length of 27 feet 4 inches, and will raise the hardtop over the steering console an inch or two for the owner’s headroom. It is framed in sitka spruce, planked with marine plywood and sheathed in 9-ounce fiberglass below the waterline and 6-ounce glass above.

Students in the 2012 Yacht Interiors class July – September 2012 built most of the interior of this boat. The hull was begun on January 7th 2013 by students in the Contemporary class and rolled upright on May 10th, 2013. Work is continuing on this beautiful, powerful boat as of this writing and we expect the boat to be completed by the Contemporary class of 2014 in time for the 2014 Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival.

The Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding is located in Port Hadlock WA, on the Olympic Peninsula, and is a private, accredited non-profit vocational school.

Our mission is to teach and preserve the fine art of wooden boatbuilding and traditional maritime crafts.

You can find us on the web at http://northwestboat.wpengine.com .

You can reach us via e-mail at [email protected] or by calling us at 360-385-4948.

This was a great week in the Bartender boat project. Quinten has a scheduled interview with an employer, the boat exterior is coming along quite nicely, and we’re getting close to actually rolling it over!

You can see more photos about the Bartender at the following link:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nwswb/sets/72157633338042561/

Congratulations, team!

L. to r: Bruce Blatchley, instructor, with Evan, Matt, Quentin and Chris.

Instructor Sean Koomen (in dark orange shirt) leads his class long-boarding the Sentinal-24 hull. Longboarding the hull is done with a long board onto which sandpaper is fastened. The board bridges minor imperfections in the hull and helps to being the hull to a uniform level that can support a high gloss finish.

This is the first boat in the Sentinal-24 class of designed by Stephens/Waring Yacht Design of Belfast, Maine (SWYD) www.stephenswaring.com .

The Sentinal-24 class is designed to be a comfortable and stylish sloop with the beautiful lines of yesterday’s classics paired with modern underbody design and state-of-the art rigging.

This vessel represents Stephens Waring Yacht Design’s signature approach to distinctive, fun and high performance sailing with more than a touch of historic grace.

The boat was designed for commercial production. Thus far, Stephens Waring Yacht Design has licensed only the Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding to build the design in modern cold-molded wood construction within the School’s Contemporary Boatbuilding program. The School will call their model, hull number one, the Sentinal class-24, and expects to launch Whisper late in the summer of 2013 for display at the Wooden Boat Festival in Port Townsend WA in September, 2013.

The cold-molded hull is just under 24 feet long overall, with 19 feet 4-inches on the waterline and a maximum beam of 8 feet on a draft of 4 feet 4 inches, displacing 2,850 with two crew. The sloop will carry 300 square feet of sail on a modern rig.

The open cockpit measures over 8 feet long, and was designed for a party of four with plenty of elbow room. The open cockpit layout is standard and combines a commanding tiller steering arrangement for ultimate steering feel, though an alternate deck arrangement has been drawn to satisfy those looking for a small cuddy and enough accomodation for an overnight excursion. The 24 will accomodate wheel steering with the modified cockpit as an upgrade.

Clean line management leads to the simplified control and trimming of sail, all ergonomically situated forward at the base of the mast. This results in a spare and restrained layout to ensure the boat is as easy as possible to handle. The standard rig is a backstay-less rig using a square-topped mainsail. For sailors who are not yet believers in square-topped mains, a more convention al sloop arrangement is offered by Stephens Waring Yacht Design, since the Signature-24 is a great platform for each owner’s customized choices.

The Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding is located in Port Hadlock WA, on the Olympic Peninsula, and is a private, accredited non-profit vocational school.

Our mission is to teach and preserve the fine art of wooden boatbuilding and traditional maritime crafts. We build both commissioned and speculative boats for sale while teaching students boatbuilding the skills they need to work in the marine trades.

You can find us on the web at boatschoolstore.com .

You can reach us via e-mail at [email protected] or by calling us at 360-385-4948.