The Lake Champlain Chapter of ACBS organizes a series of workshops hosted by wood boat shops in the region each winter. It gives us an opportunity to commiserate that, in Vermont we have 9 months of winter and 3 months of hard sledding – our boat season.
Snake Mountain Boatworks’ workshops place a premium on doing something hands-on that has potential to add value for everyone in the room. Last winter we had folks donning gloves and testing a variety of paint and varnish strippers.
This year, and in response to all the questions we have had about invoking a Dutchman repair to preserve the maximum possible amount of original wood during a preservation project.
John La Fountain leapt into action and prepared Dutchman projects to repair rotted and separated wood in the stem of the 1953 22’ Shepherd Utility, and splits, random fastener holes in a topside plank of the 1930 16’ Dodge runabout we are preserving.
The Dodge Dutchman repair is presented here and in the clip that follows immediately below. We will post the Shepherd stem/knee Dutchman clinic soonest.
Yes, these two clips are long by YouTube standards, but I lost the story when I edited it down to under 3 minutes. So, grab a cup of whatever, sit back, and enjoy the next 16 minutes or so.
Vintage Boat Preservation
