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This is a six-day course ending Saturday
If you want to build a lightweight, rugged, and beautiful small boat, combining thin strips of wood with epoxy and fiberglass will make a cartoppable, low-maintenance, and gorgeous vessel. Nick Schade has been building strip-built boats for over 30 years. He has written two of the standard texts on the subject, Building Strip-Planked Boats and The Strip-Built Sea Kayak, and his efforts have guided thousands of people through building their own boats using the popular strip-planked method.
In this six-day course, students will explore this method of construction while building two very different boat designs created by Nick – a Mystic River tandem canoe and the microBootlegger Sport sea kayak. The microBootlegger Sport is a 15′5″ x 23″ sea kayak with beautiful lines suitable for exploring lakes or heading out to sea. The Mystic River 17′ tandem canoe is a wonderful example of a classic wood-strip canoe with graceful lines and a beautiful recurved stem. You’ll be using standard strip-planking methods that do not include ribs, so the interior will be clean and smooth.
Students will gain experience in a wide variety of techniques involved in this modern boatbuilding process. We will be putting emphasis on the “fine” aspect of the class title, striving to create a beautiful boat with matched strips and careful craftsmanship.
Throughout the week, Nick will take time to discuss the many variations on the strip-building process that students can use in their own boatbuilding projects. After a week of fun work, we’ll step back to admire two stunning boats that will raffled off to two lucky students.
