Hands on Traditional skills and where to learn them

Boat building

What is it?Traditional boat building involves making boats by hand with timber as a key material. It has taken on many different styles and sizes over the centuries, from the simplest dug-out canoes to more advanced 19th century galleons and warships. It's difficult to estimate how many people may still be involved in the craft in Ireland – some estimates put the number as low as 10 – but there are efforts to ensure it survives.

How is it done?How you build a boat depends on what it is going to be used for. Many of Ireland's lake boats follow on from Viking tradition, using long single planks. There are quite a number of past skills still in use and, whereas boat builders today may use electric planers and some power tools, many will still work with hand tools.

Traditional boat builder Del Harding, who runs classes, likens the structure of a boat to an animal.

“There are several stages and essentially a boat is built on a natural structure, much like a skeleton and a skin. With a boat it is all curves and a curve is a natural shape that has buoyancy in it. That is very important because with a boat the pressures are from outside and the water can move in any direction.”

Several types of timber are often used for different aspects of the boat, depending in the type of pressure and curves needed. Traditionally, Irish boat building involved vessels such as currachs or hookers, but from the 18th century onwards, a more Scottish tradition began to take hold in Ireland, particularly in northern regions.

The availability of fibreglass moulds led to the decline of traditional boat building from the mid 20th century onwards. The majority of boat builders will spend some of their time now working with fibreglass.

How long does it take?This depends very much on what type of boat a person wants to build and how many people are working on it. A group of very skilled builders could build an average sized lake boat in roughly a month. But a craftsman might take several months to build a one-off model. Harding, for example, is building a boat with two apprentices at weekends. He began it early May and it is almost two thirds complete.

Where do I sign up?The Centre for Environmental Living and Training (CELT) in Co Clare runs summer courses on traditional boat building with Harding, which is designed to resurrect traditional skills and to teach the fundamental principles of boat design and execution. Some of the courses are part-funded and they run for up to eight consecutive weekends during the summer.

The next one is due to begin in May 2012. For more information email info@celtnet.org, phone 061-640765 or see celtnet.org

Another organisation running regular classes in traditional boat building is AK Ilen in west Cork, which has various classes for both young people and adults. These include night classes which give an introduction to wooden boat building and a programme for young people in Limerick.

It is a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to education through the medium of wooden boat building.

The next workshops take place in September and October (bigboatbuild.com and ilen.ie).