Week One: What am I doing in Lyme Regis?

To cut a long story short, I am training to be a traditional wooden boat builder at The Boat Building Academy (http://www.boatbuildingacademy.com/) in Lyme Regis.

How did I come to be on this course. . .? Whilst crossing North America on my bike (www.daylightrob.blogspot.com) I had the time to consider what to do with my life and I kept coming back to the idea of a more active, hands on and practical job. I had completed a City & Guild in Carpentry & Joinery so it seemed logical to build on these skills because I enjoy working with wood. An afternoon trolling the internet resulted in finding The Boat Building Academy and after paying them a visit in January this year I was sold on the idea. I am now one week into the 38 week 'Long Course' http://www.boatbuildingacademy.com/courses/longcourse.htm.

"The City & Guilds of London Institute Course 2451 Boat Building, Maintenance and Support at Level 3 is our flagship course, designed to enable students to gain jobs in the marine industry or establish themselves as boat builders in their own right."

From day one we were bombarded with information, terminology, new names and challenging tasks and the time has flown by. We were each given a tool box with the basic tools we need to get us through the first few weeks. The chisels and plane blades needed a fair amount of attention so the first day was spent practicing grinding and honing our sharp edges. We do this every day and it becomes faster and easier every time. Its so important to have sharp cutting edges otherwise the quality and speed of the work suffers.

All the work we do is by hand- there are no motorised tools used so its empowering to achieve exact results with hand tools alone.

















The joint you see in the shape of a lightening strike is a Hooked Scarf and this particular piece will be used to form part of a clinker section we build as an assessment to be graded by the instructors. It took a solid day to prepare a piece of wood, cut it into two and then cut, chisel and plane each piece to achieve this tight fitting joint. After taking it out of the clamps, removing the excess glue and smoothing things out I felt a real sense of achievement to see the two pieces of wood were divided by a barely visible line.