Every few years, I invite readers and colleagues to contribute guest columns in the series Technology and my Hobby/Passion. Over a hundred contributed in the last decade on their birding, charities, cooking, music, sports and every other passion, and how it keeps evolving with technology. Click here and scroll down to read them all.
This time it is Jim Shepherd who recently retired from Plex Systems where he was Vice President of Corporate Strategy. Prior to Plex, Jim spent 20 years as an industry analyst at AMR Research and Gartner covering enterprise applications and advanced manufacturing. When not building boats he does independent consulting for software companies, manufacturers, and investors.
I have spent my entire career at the intersection of technology and manufacturing. I started out in the 1970’s nominally managing manufacturing operations and supply chain but most of my time was focused on implementing MRP II and plant automation systems. I then went on to spend many years of working for manufacturing software firms and then writing about them as an industry analyst at AMR Research and Gartner. After more than 40 years in the field I am still fascinated by high-volume manufacturing and sophisticated technology. Given that background I suppose it’s a bit ironic that my passion is building wooden boats, at a slow pace, using as little modern technology as possible.
The boats themselves are traditional designs and powered by paddles, oars, or sails. I admit to owning a 32-foot lobster boat with a big V-8 engine but the boats that I build are strictly human or wind powered. I don’t really think of this as rejecting modern technology so much as appreciating the several thousand years of marine propulsion that pre-dated the steam engine. If the Polynesians and Vikings could cross oceans without engines there is no reason that I shouldn’t be able to explore the coast of New England by oar and sail.
I certainly enjoy using the boats but it’s the building process that I really love. I have been a woodworker most of my life, and I have a shop that is well equipped with the usual power saws, drill presses, and planers, but I made the decision when I built my first boat that I would try to use hand tools and traditional methods as much as possible. I build the boats for pleasure, and my only deadlines are self-imposed, so there is no good reason to use a power tool when a chisel or spoke shave or block plane will do the job. Beyond the perverse satisfaction of doing it by hand I have learned to appreciate the quietness of shaping wood by hand and to prefer the curled shavings of cedar and mahogany rather than piles of sawdust.
I have always liked hand tools and I was fortunate enough to inherit some of my grandfather’s (a boatbuilder and casket maker) and my father’s tools. They are generally clever designs with the kind of satisfying ergonomics that come from being conceived and built by people who were actually going to use them. I find that they are particularly well suited to the process of making a wooden boat because it requires so much shaping by eye. Power tools tend to remove wood too quickly and they are biased toward cutting straight lines and square corners - those don’t exist in wooden boats. I still love big cutting tools from table saws to CNC 5-Axis milling machines but there is an amazing tactile pleasure in forming a complex “fair curve” in a 10 foot piece of hardwood using nothing but a bronze and steel hand tool largely unchanged in 200 years.
Another aspect of my love of boat building is the intellectual challenge that it offers every day. I build from a set of plans with rough dimensions but i have found each builder makes their own decisions about process, sequence, and methods. Even the decision to build it upside-down or right-side up is frequently a matter of heated debate. Building by myself adds another interesting dimension to the problem. There are lots of processes that require more than two hands and I will often spend several hours inventing some Rube Goldberg device to hold a long floppy piece of wood in place while I work on the other end.
This was my first boat building project, a double paddle canoe for my wife. It’s obviously way too small for me and it probably wasn’t a great idea to launch it in December in New England:
On top is Tashtego which I spent nearly a year building. Sadly she was destroyed in a Fall storm on Martha’s Vineyard.
Here is the current boat in process. It has turned out to be the perfect “social distancing” project since there is not really room for anyone else in the shop
At some point in the transition from a pile of wood to a boat-like shape I unconsciously gave it a name. Boats, like children and pets, seem to require names even though I’ve never been inclined to name other inanimate objects like cars or houses. This one is called Fetch because it will serve as the tender to our cruising boat named Retriever and it will be used to go ashore for guests and supplies.
Fetch will replace an inflatable dinghy with a small outboard engine that does its job perfectly well but I have never loved it. It’s probably significant that it is the one boat I never gave a name! My expectation is that Fetch will do the job just as well while being lighter, better looking, and much quieter. Being a rowing and sailing boat it should also provide some pleasant exercise and recreation. Like my use of hand tools to build the boat I find something attractive about reverting to a much older boat technology that still works very well (perhaps better.) I think of this as just another example of a new technology (fiberglass boats with engines) that doesn’t really replace the prior generation, it simply expands our choices.
I think that building wooden boats somehow satisfies my need to make tangible and useful things along with some aesthetic desire for them to be beautiful. I love the fact that it has nothing to do with the software business and it is (at least in my case) a solitary activity. Some of the work requires intense concentration but there are also hundreds of hours of mindless sanding, painting and varnishing where I can think big thoughts or just listen to good music.
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