The School begins classes once each year, early in October. Students are divided into sections of 12 students each, and get two hours of classroom instruction and six hours of shop instruction per day, Monday through Friday 8am – 5pm.
Basic Boatbuilding is the focus of the first semester, which runs from early October to late December.
The instructors assume that most, if not all, students have no woodworking skills and proceed from that assumption. The skills taught in the first semester are those essential to boatbuilding, and the course, for that reason, is very "hands-on".
Students learn to sharpen and use all their tools, and participate in a wide range of individual skill-building exercises, from learning to make the joints commonly used in boatbuilding to a series of tools. Students learn to draft and make a half-model. Then, working in pairs, they learn to loft a boat full-size on the floor.
Finally, working, together as a team, the semester culminates in December as students work together in their sections to build a flat-bottomed skiff.
This is the Monk Skiff, or flat-iron, being built by Sean Koomen’s section. Student Noah Flegal is working on the cross-planked bottom of this skiff. The western red cedar sheer plank is bent on in place but not yet fastened; it’s being pre-shaped to fit. It is held in place by several lapstrake clamps (and a spring clamp at the stem, or bow). Monk Skiffs are among our more popular boats built by the Basic Boatbuilding Classes. Behind Noah, at the far end of the shop, is the 1924 William Atkin-designed skiff, Scandal.
The Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding is located in Port Hadlock WA and is a private, accredited non-profit vocational school.
Our mission is to teach and preserve the skills and crafts of fine wooden boatbuilding and other traditional maritime crafts.
You can find us on the web at www.nwboatschool.org .
You can reach us via e-mail at info@nwboatschool.org or by calling us at 360-385-4948
