User:Simonsonbondz/Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding

Founded in 1981, the Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding (NWSWB) is an accredited trade school based in Port Hadlock, on Washington's Olympic Peninsula. In operation for over three decades, the school is dedicated to teaching and preserving fine wooden boatbuilding and other traditional maritime crafts. The NWSWB offers four concentrations of study: Traditional Small Craft, Traditional Large Craft, Contemporary Boatbuilding, and Comprehensive Sailmaking & Rigging, as well as a number of not-for-credit workshops focusing on traditional maritime trades.

History
By the early 1980's, wooden boatbuilding in the Seattle area was almost nonexistent. Lake Union, once a hub of northwest boatbuilding, had only two shops actively building boats by 1969. In an effort to preserve the trade, Libby Palmer and Henry Yeaton partnered with Puget Sound Master boatbuilder Robert "Bob" Prothero to found the Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding in Port Townsend, WA, in 1981.

Descendent from nine generations of boatbuilders and mariners, Bob Prothero spent over a half century building wooden boats in the Seattle area before founding the school. With his brother Frank, he operated the Prothero Boat Co. on Lake Union. Over a 36 year span, they built roughly 250 wooden vessels, from fishing boats to yachts, and restored countless others. Just five years after founding the NWSWB, Bob passed away in 1986.

Often referred to as "The Boat School" by locals, the NWSWB has trained thousands of craftspeople since it's founding. Graduates of the Boat School have gone on to be leaders in their communities, boat-shop owners, and shipwrights, as well as luthiers, furniture makers, sailmakers, and other maritime professionals.

Northwest Style Boatbuilding
According to the instructors at the school, northwest boatbuilders developed a very unique, efficient, and precise method of boatbuilding based on a melding of previous traditions. "All the best boatbuilders and designers moved to the northwest because of our abundance of excellent boatbuilding materials" said Ray Speck, guest instructor and master boatbuilder, during a three part lecture on wood technology in 2012. The pacific northwest, because of it's reliance on the sea for travel and trade, attracted those who sailed, built, and repaired wooden boats from all around the world (England, Norway, Japan, Yugoslavia, etc). The proximity of varying boatbuilding traditions helped to to create the northwest style.

In particular, the northwest style of boatbuilding focuses on the lofting process. During a 2012 lecture, Senior Instructor Jeff Hammond noted that northwest builders will spend more time in the lofting process developing subtle details but that they will save time overall and produce a superior boat. Prothero himself asserted that craftsmanship was 10% handwork and 90% head work.

Concentrations
The Boat School offers four main concentrations: Traditional Small Craft, Traditional Large Craft, Contemporary Boatbuilding, and Comprehensive Sailmaking & Rigging.

Traditional Small Craft
The Traditional Small Craft program concentrates on construction techniques of small boats 10 to 25 feet. The small boats may utilize lapstrake (clinker) planking or carvel planking and may employ steam-bent frames or sawn frames. These small open boats, meaning they are not typically decked, may simply be for rowing, or a combination of rowing and sailing.

Students in this course will be well versed in lofting, spiling, scribing, planking, framing, steam-bending, milling lumber, oar making, finishing and much more. Project boats may include rowing skiffs, motor launches, daysailers and small working craft.

Traditional Large Craft
The Boat School's Large Craft program focuses on craft approximately 25 - 35 feet. The vessels in this program are typically carvel-planked with sawn or bent frames and include features such as ballast keels, built-up backbones, decks, cabins, engines, and spars. Examples of boats constructed in this program include fishing boats, tugs, cruising yachts, large sailing vessels, and motorboats.

The vessels built in large craft may span multiple years, as with the construction of the Forest Service Boat completed in August, 2012.

Heritage Campus
At it's inception, the NWSWB was located in Boat Haven Shipyard in Port Townsend, WA. Two years later, the school moved to the Glen Cove Industrial Park on the outskirts of town where it remained for over two decades. In 2004, the school and all its operations were moved to it's current Heritage Campus in Lower Hadlock, WA.

Twenty minutes south of Port Townsend, the Boat School's Heritage Campus is a six-acre plot on the shores of lower Port Townsend Bay. The school operates out of three buildings: the Captain Westrem building, the Community Boathouse, and the Jeff Hammond Shop (located on the upper campus). The school also owns a welding shop that operated in collaboration with Peninsula College, plus a number of temporary shelters to shelter boats and partner projects such as the Community Boat Project and the Felicity Ann Project.