Tag: boat builder

Photos of Stirling & Son Victorian cutter build

Stirling & Son Victorian cutter Integrity housed dovetail on companion (never to be seen again!)

Difficult-looking housed dovetail joint

Stirling & Son Victorian cutter Integrity ash and copper fastened blocks Stirling & Son Victorian cutter Integrity bronze bound bowsprit roller Stirling & Son Victorian cutter Integrity finishing the 24ft bowsprit

Ash and copper fastened blocks; bronze-bound bowsprit roller; finishing the 24ft bowsprit

Will Stirling of Stirling & Son has sent in some more photographs from the building of the Victorian-style cutter Integrity. Here’s what he has to say:

‘Integrity is coming on well. We are putting on her deck which has been an exercise in higher mathematics. It is tapered and swept so that the outboard planks follow the covering board yet the planks midships are on the centreline. A typically Victorian attitude of seeking the aesthetic with little regard for labour!

‘To us it seems relatively complicated; as one of the shipwrights wryly commented, perhaps that is why it died out! I shall send a photo of the sequence once it is all on.

‘Hope all continues well, best wishes,

‘Will’

 

Will and his colleagues are always up to something interesting, and he has a very interesting range of plans for traditional craft for sale. For more posts about Stirling & Son, click here.

Stirling & Son traditional yacht building and wooden boat repair is based at Tavistock, Devon. For more information see www.stirlingandson.co.uk.

 

Great finds discovered and restored: two Macgregor canoes and a Salter’s rowing gig

Macgregor canoe

Salter's skiff before restoration by Adrian Morgan Salter's skiff restored by Adrian Morgan

Adrian Morgan wrote a couple of weeks ago to remind me of some treasures that I might have missed. He’s right, I need to make amends – though in my defence nobody mentioned them to me at the time!

(Note to traditional boat builders: please tell me what you’re doing, as this website gets seen by a lot of people!)

One important find was two rare and very beautiful MacGregor canoe found in the Marquess of Aberdeen’s sawmill loft a year or so ago – Macgregors are very rare and Adrian says the canoes came with full documentation. Adrian says the canoes were like Bugattis found in a barn: complete with chicken poo and swadust, they had been untouched for nearly 100 years.

Naturally, the Royal Canoe Club were over the moon and the canoes have since been restored by Colin Henwood.

There’s more about Macgregor here and here.

Another discovery at the same site was a half-rigged rowing gig made by Salter’s, which Adrian went on to restore – there’s more about this boat at Adrian’s website, but he says the colour of the Brazilian mahogany that appeared after weeks of stripping the gig was amazing. After treating the splits, liberal doses of Varnol brought the timber back from dry lifelessness to rich, deep colour.

Traditional boat builder Adrian Morgan is based at Ullapool and has a website at www.viking-boats.com and a weblog at www.thetroublewitholdboats.blogspot.com. The weblog is certainly interesting: recent posts argue for working with your hands rather than a mouse; praise the Jumbo, the Solent and the work of  Fair Isle boat builder Ian Best; and appeal for plans for longish gun punts.

PS – I’m reminded that informative notes on the Rob Roy canoe are included in Macgregor’s book The Rob Roy on the Baltic, which is available from Dixon-Price Publishing. There’s also some material in the book Practical Boat Building For Amateurs.

BBA student Jonathan Palmer wins a big photography prize

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Beer Lugger 2010 Winning Photo

Boat builder Jonathan Palmer has won a first prize in the traditional maritime skills in action section of a photographic competition sponsored by National Historic Ships and Classic Boat magazine.

Jon’s winning photograph (above) was taken in May at the Boat Building Academy workshops where he has been a student.

Titled Beer Lugger 2010, the photograph from the building of the new Beer boat Steadfast by students on Jon’s course. He caught the boat on camera as it was awaiting the frenzied process of hot nailing, in which copper nails are quickly hammered into freshly steamed timber ribs and riveted into place.

The prizes were awarded at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich – after the ceremony Jon apparently enjoyed a game of croquet and a very civilised afternoon tea. He says he will spend the prize money on tools for LP Boatworks, a company that he and fellow Boat Building Academy graduate Ben Larcombe have set up in Colyton, Devon. They plan to offer traditional and modern boat building, restoration and repairs.

Jon’s photo can also be seen in the November issue of Classic Boat or on the National Historic Ships website.

Positioning the copper nails before hot nailing Holding the ribs in postion while the nails are being hammered

Readying the copper nails before hot nailing; the hot nailing process itself