Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum

[Alan Peck]

The Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum has what they call an "apprentice for a day" program. On saturdays and sundays, they allow people to work in their boat shop. What you do during the day depends on where they are on building a small boat and on your interests and experience level.

For me it was a terrific experience to work in their shop. All work was with non-powered hand tools (except for the bandsaw). On the day I was there I learned about cutting the rabbit in the stem, cutting bevels on a transom and how to make a set of oars using just a band saw, a block plane and a spoke shave.

The shop manger (Bob) sorry, I forget his last name was great. His enthusiasm was terrific.

Of course you can't accomplish a lot in just one day, but the experience was great and the cost was only $25. Someday I hope to spend a week or two at the Wooden Boat School, but this was a taste of that experience. One individual I met was going to go every Saturday for six weeks or so to experience the different phases of construction.

If you decide to give it a try, you might want to call first and see what they plan to be doing on a particular weekend.

The smell of all those wood shavings alone was worth it.

[Alan Peck]

I sure wish I could write better. My post did a poor job of describing the experience. It wasn't just the boat building experience. It was the wood burning stove in the middle of the shop on a cool day along with all the tools, blocks, other boats, the smells of wood and paint, etc. etc.

[Steve Lansdowne]

Ah, the excitement of one's first time! How long were your planing curls?

Treat yourself to a week or two at the WB School, ideally in the beginning class with Greg Rossel, aka the professor, and you'll be in eighth heaven. On the way up, stop off in Bath and at the various other maritime museums along the way. You'll never regret it.

[Alan Peck]

Steve: Never did get any really long planing curls. But, I did accumulate quite a lot of them!

[PaulC]

Gee Alan, I thought you described it pretty well. It makes me wish we had something like that around here. Can you bring in little projects of your own, like if you wanted to make a paddle, or some oars, or a simple model?

[Alan Peck]

As far as I know you can't bring in your own projects. It really would be great if there was a place where you could.