Hi Folks,
I’ve been largely off the radar for some time, with the pandemic, house sale, and new house buy. But we’ve made it to retirement and are now situated on the Northern Neck, close to the Rappahannock River in Virginia. We found a place with some land (6 acres, largely wooded), and decent work spaces for my wife’s studio and my shop. Hers is an attached 2 car garage which we insulated, rocked, and climate controlled, and mine is a detached large garage with 10’ rollup door and 12’ ceilings. The house needs work, but what else is new?
It will be a while before I’m starting a new boat of my own, but I’ve hooked up with John England over at the Deltaville Maritime Museum, in the boat shop there. There’s a lot going on! I’d like to offer up this thread as a running document of the boats being built, and the history, skills, and work being preserved there.
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The Deltaville boat builder Willard Norris who passed away just this January at age 94, was pretty much the last commercial deadrise builder still left in a town once teeming with working watermen and boat builders. His shop on Lover’s Lane was one of many there on Jackson Creek.
https://chesapeakebaymagazine.com/de...ses-at-age-94/
https://www.proptalk.com/captain-wil...adrise-builder
Before he died, Norris had begun work on a new 25’ deadrise skiff with his grandson. They had the skiff set up with keelson, stem, chine plank and log, and transom plank, with maybe half of the bottom planked. When he passed on in January, the skiff bottom was given to John England at the museum boat shop to complete. John and a crew of volunteers have been turning out deadrise skiffs there for quite a while, using patterns, notes, and setup dimensions from old time builders, or from derelict hulls that John has found and measured.
John England and the new Norris boat in the shop.
A view underneath of keelson, and chine plank spreader, plus some bracing to keep things square.
The view out back behind the shop.
I’ve just this week joined the crew in the boat shop on a little arm of Jackson Creek, and have started working on this great skiff. As we go on, I’ll try to document the work on this skiff, and maybe take a look around at some other projects and points of interest in the area. I'll describe the setup of these "rack of eye" skiffs, with some scantling info. There’s so much boat building history here! Thanks for looking.