At Salisbury, the boat building season starts around the first of December. We use the fall trimester to schedule students, order supplies and boat kits, if necessary. This year, when the dust settled, we have five students making boats: four skin-on-frame, double paddle, low-seat canoes and one Sassafras 16 canoe from
Chesapeake Light Craft.
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One Chesapeake Light Craft kit boat - a Sassafras 16 |
The skin-on-frame boats are built completely from scratch; we fabricate all the parts in the wood shop, from templates and recorded dimensions. I actually don't have a set of plans, but have a number of sets of forms. The boat we build is essentially the one described in
Hilary Russell's book,
Building Skin-on-Frame Double Paddle Canoes which I helped design and edit.
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Sassafras, further along |
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Stringer ends trimmed, ready for lashing |
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Lashing ribs to stringers |