Learn the basics of wooden boat building while helping to preserve the North Shore’s boating culture. The herring skiff is the traditional workboat of Lake Superior’s North Shore, but its rugged and practical design make it a great choice for a wooden fishing or pleasure boat today. This stout vessel is designed to be powered by a modest 10 to 15 hp outboard motor, dragged up on a rocky shore and handle well with hundreds of pounds of fish…or few a passengers. In this unique team-taught traditional boatbuilding fundamentals course, students will learn all the skills necessary to tackle their own boatbuilding project by building a replica of a Herring Skiff built in 1940’s in Colvill, MN, now owned by the Cook County Historical Society. The instructor has taken the lines off this boat, and has used these to create the boat plans students will learn to read, turning shapes on paper into pieces of a boat. We will start the herring skiff by shaping the stem, keel and transom and take the boat through planking, but along the way cover basic boat joinery and learn the principles needed to build any part of a boat. It will be great practice using traditional edge tools to shape pieces. Students will also learn to master bevels so that every piece of the boat relates properly to every other piece. We will also cover caulking, painting and all the other details you’ll need to know down the line on your own project.

You will need the following tools for this class:

If you have tools, please bring them; it is beneficial to use the tools you are familiar with or in some cases learn to use the tools you own. If you don't own tools and plan to buy them, it is perhaps better to wait until after the class at North House in which we will discuss tools and the right tools to buy.

Feel free to bring your favorite tools and whatever materials you might feel appropriate for this course.