PORT HADLOCK — A group of shipwrights went back in time over the weekend as they learned boat-building techniques used in the 11th century by Vikings.
“This may be the first time that Viking technology has been used on the West Coast of the United States,” said instructor Jay Smith.
“There has been a resurgence of interest in this work in Norway and the Arctic but no one’s done it here yet.”
At the three-day workshop that ended Sunday at the Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding in Port Hadlock, 14 students learned how to build Nordic lapstrake boats, which were first constructed before the advent of sawmills.
“People are learning how to use tools and their hands in a way that is still relevant today,” said Betsy Davis, the school’s executive director, as the workshop began Friday.
“It’s been really exciting to see them really engaged in this process.”
Students split logs into vertical grain (riven) planks with the use of hardwood wedges and turned them into finished planks with broad axe, draw knife, spokeshave and cabinet scraper.
The students were taught two techniques: the creation of hardwood splitters and how to use them to turn large logs into planks for ship construction.
The workshop didn’t tackle actual shipbuilding, a process that could take months depending on the design and the number of people involved, Smith said.
Smith said the workshop’s purpose was to help students feel comfortable with the old tools, which are new to them, and to understand the difference between a broad axe and a chopping axe.
“We want them to gain a true understanding about how difficult this really was,” Smith said.
“We want them to understand what a tree splitter is and why logs follow certain grains and what forms are inherent in the tree itself.”
Recognizing those forms allows them to extract them and determine the best use for them in boat building, he added.
Smith said there was some use of iron wedges, but the trees were usually split using “low tech” hardwood wedges.
“There is a lot of labor required to do it this way, to build a boat using only raw materials,” he said.
Smith, from Anacortes, is a boat builder who has apprenticed in Norway, worked in the Faroe Islands and Denmark and studied under master boat builders to learn these techniques.
Most of the participants were students at the school, although the workshop was not part of the curriculum.
Ethan Hickman, a garden designer and part-time carpenter, traveled from Olympia specifically for the workshop.
“I wanted to learn how to work with the old ways with tools using the old methods,” he said.
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Jefferson County Editor Charlie Bermant can be reached at 360-385-2335 or cbermant@peninsuladailynews.com.
