Maine, Boatmaking

Speaker is from Beals, ME; he is a 77-year-old white man with a grade-school education.

Download File

[FW:] How do you go about makin’ a, uh, small rowboat?

[INF:] Well, you just make, the uh, small scale model and draft it from that. Make a keel out.

[FW:] You make a scale model first?

[INF:] Mos’, most everybody does, make a scale model or else they draft ’em out, draw them out on paper. Either one you want do-doesn’t matter.

[FW:] How big are these, uh, scale models?

[INF:] A general rule on small type boat, just a three quarter inch to a foot. The large ones are up to a quarter inch to a foot.

[FW:] Uh-huh. An’ what’s the purpose of the, uh, scale, scale model?

[INF:]Well, to determine the length, and the breadth, and the width and all this.

[FW:] Oh, I see. They just use smaller…

[INF:] That’s right.

[FW:] Everything, and then they just scale them up and down.

[INF:] Uh-huh.

[FW:] And, uh, then how do you go about starting to build the, the boat itself?

[INF:] Well, you make a keel first, from the model, or from the draftings, drawings, whatever it is. Then, you make a stem, and a stern. After the small stuff, the small boats, well, you bend the frame, uh, the, you make a molds-what we call the molds, that is, sectionals, sections of it, of the, if they are so far apart, on the boat, you take the shape of it, make sections.

[FW:] What do they use to do that? Plywood?

[INF:] Just plywood or cedar-either, it doesn’t matter.