Robb White (article)

[swingking]

Not a lot of info about Robb White on the web,
so I wanted to post this link:

An artist who happens to be a boat builder (http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/epaper/editions/today/metro_c34dad50d51cb0a40061.html) ]

30K for 16' poplar 35lb boat is not too bad.

Mat

[wolfietuk]

If you pay 30k for a 16 boat you are buying art and not a boat. If that boat is made of poplar you had better hang it on a wall instead of sailing it. An artist no matter how good cannot change the properties of wood. Poplar is tight grained, cheep and works well. But it is not unusually light, and has almost no rot resistance.

Rick

[Dave Carnell]

Robb's take on tulip poplar is quite different. He cites very old structures, watering troughs, etc. of poplar.

He is a regular contributor to Messing About in Boats, there was a feature article on him in WB recently, and he also appears in Peter Spectre's On The Waterfront regularly.

[swingking]

Looks like link has moved.

'An artist who happens to be a boat builder'
Thomasville man applies unique method to design crafts
Bill Osinski - Staff
Sunday, May 5, 2002

Thomasville --- His life is framed in wood and lived mostly against the grain.

"I do just about everything peculiar," said Robb White, a 62-year-old boat builder, writer, biologist and professional contrarian. "I'm suspicious of all conventional wisdom."

That disdain for doing things someone else's way is what leads White, the brother of author and former National Public Radio commentator Bailey White, to build his boats in landlocked Thomas County.

That's also why he shapes his skiffs and sailboats with his eye, rather than be restricted by things such as plans or forms. And why he uses a type of wood that others say just isn't fit for a fine boat.

From all this unorthodoxy comes what White calls "the lightest, strongest, and pound-for-pound most expensive little boats in the world."

Boating experts don't challenge White's claim, though they may scratch their heads over some of his methods. His customers are his primary marketing tools.

And any landlubber can tell that his boats are way out of the ordinary. A child could lift practically any of them. He makes sailboat masts lighter than baseball bats.

To White, building boats is more than a craft, it is a "lifetime obsession." Perhaps that's why he puts so much passion into their creation.

"A little boat is a precious thing," White said.

How precious? They are not meant for the casual sailor. For example, he recently sold a 16-foot sailboat for more than $30,000.

White has become successful enough that he recently stopped taking orders for boats. Now, as he sees himself nearing the limit of the number of boats he'll build in his lifetime, he has decided simply to work by bids.

"My customers will tell me how much they'll pay me to build them a boat," he said.

Matthew Murphy, editor of Wooden Boat magazine, said it is White's departure from generally accepted practices that sets him apart, as much as the quality of his boats.

"He hasn't built a boat to a set of plans in a long time," Murphy said.

White is an irregular contributor to Murphy's Brooklin, Maine-based magazine, and Murphy has visited White in Thomasville and reported on his unconventional techniques.

White's reliance on his eye to shape his boats may be highly unusual for modern times, he said, but that's the way Scandanavian explorers built their crafts 1,000 years ago.

And while the typical New England wooden boat builder might question White's use of tulip poplar for most of his hull construction, Murphy said, White seems to be able to make it work for him. "He knows wood," Murphy said.

White's customers seem to believe they have purchased truly special boats from a unique boat builder.

"Robb White is to an average boat builder what Stradivarius was to the average violin maker," said Frank Jarrell, a Coweta County resident who rows his 16-foot skiff mostly in the waters of Lake Blackshear.

"It's a beautiful piece of craft," Jarrell said of his boat, "a pleasure to row and beautiful to look at."

Atlanta attorney Larry Pless sought a boat like his grandfather's fishing skiff, and White built one for him. Pless filled out a 16-page questionnaire, so that White could get a feel for the kind of craft he wanted.

The first time he took his boat out on Lake Rabun, Pless said, a stranger motioned for him to pull into his dock, just so he could admire the boat.

Pless described White as "an artist who happens to be a boat builder."

White describes himself as a man who hasn't outgrown his youthful desire to leave the world behind, by going off into the forest or by sailing to uncharted islands.

Several generations up his family tree, there was some wealth, he said. His great-grandfather was a bootblack in Philadelphia who invented a modern form of shoe polish and then followed even wealthier folks from the north in buying a Thomas County plantation in the late 19th century, he said.

Most of the family fortune was gone by the time he came along, but they still had the land, he said. His father was a writer, who left the family when he was a boy, so White has had to work in other fields to supplement his boatbuilding income. He's been a teacher, furniture factory manager and a tugboat crewman.

"It wasn't until seven or eight years ago that I could afford one of my own boats," he said.

White joined the Navy at 17, later married a Thomas County girl, and the two of them worked together building plywood boats when he was stationed in Puerto Rico. After his stint in the Navy, he studied marine biology, stopping short of obtaining his doctorate.

He returned to Thomas County, where he has a home and workshop secreted in a small wooded area not far from downtown Thomasville.

As he gets older, White said he is more inclined to build boats that present a special challenge.

He is working on a 20-foot launch that is his adaptation of a World War II boat that was designed to cross the English Channel, yet go into the French shoreline to rescue downed pilots.

His launch, powered by a 20-horsepower engine, should be able to reach speeds of about 20 knots in water as shallow as six inches, he said. This boat is for himself and his wife to explore parts of the Gulf; it is not for sale, he said.

"I want to go places where you can't go in no Jet Ski," White said.

Till he reaches his last lost island, he will continue to build his little boats.

"I do for a living what I love most in life," he said. "I'm probably a little too happy."

[Sam F]

I read Mr. White has had a column in Messing about in Boats. In it he has explained his techniques and they are very unconventional.
It works basically like this: He heats his shop up to an uncomfortable temp... applies epoxy to the individual planks and then uses a huge air conditioner to cool the room. The gasses in the hot wood (upon cooling) contract and draw the epoxy deep into the wood's pores. This process "epoxifies" the wood and no doubt is responsible for the good service life his boats seem to exhibit.
I can agree with him on tulip poplar's properties.
I tore down a old building that had been sheathed mostly in old growth all-heartwood poplar. Some of the wood was left in direct contact with the ground. I'm ashamed to admit how long I ignored this stuff. redface.gif When I finally got around to moving it, the few pieces of pine had virtually disintegrated while the poplar was still fine.

[John Gearing]

In MAIB a few years ago I recall reading an article by White where he said that what he does is sheathe individual planks in fiberglass and then fasten them together lapstrake style. Unconventional, to say the least. 30k for a 16-foot boat IS a lot of money, but we have all seen people asking that much for a Haven, and there is a H-12 1/2 advertized at Cannell, Payne & Page right now for 30K. I guess this is a classic example of market economics--if that's what someone wants to pay, so be it. Kinda hard for me to accept.....but to each his own.

[casem]

I remember reading the WB article about his building methods. The thing that struck me as a bit hypocritical is in one paragraph he's criticizing plywood for the usual reasons and in the next he's talking about coating tulip poplar planks on both sides with fiberglass, which I can only imagine is for cross-grain strength. What's the difference? I mean, would those glued laps hold if it weren't for the fiberglass?

[ 05-06-2002, 07:55 PM: Message edited by: casem ]

[Bill Perkins]

Thanks for the article SK . I didn't know Bailey White was Robs sister ; an interesting family . The technical articles Rob writes for MAIB are alone worth the price of a subscription to that Mag .

Casem right or wrong ,I thought his reasons for not useing imported ply were Ecological , and perhaps esthetic . I do think the rotary peeled surface plys on even high grade ply can look too busy and unnatural when finished bright . That's what interested me in his use of sawn lumber in a glued lapstrake construction . One wouldn't have to get in to the whole precupping thing .

[ 05-06-2002, 08:49 PM: Message edited by: Bill Perkins ]

[Paul Reagan]

Robb White is a special person. His mind is uncluttered with conventional things. I spoke with a person from Georgia who was having a boat built by Robb. He told me that, after a year in the works, the boat would be finished in a few weeks, but he was going to have Robb build another boat, just so that he'd have a reason to be in touch with Robb for another year. What a compliment!