January Blue Skies and Sunshine
Posted by The Dory Shop |
It's a beautiful, sunny day here at the Dory Shop!
Posted by The Dory Shop |
It's a beautiful, sunny day here at the Dory Shop!
Posted by The Dory Shop |
A very busy few months at Lunenburg's Dory Shop makes for an interesting read. Here's a taste of what we've been up to and what we'll get into next!
Posted by The Dory Shop |
The historic port of Lunenburg has a unique way of welcoming the holiday season. Like many communities, the town hosts a Santa Claus parade, but there’s something that makes ours just a little bit different. The parade here has a boat theme; specifically, parade organizers seek to place as many of the entrees as possible in dories and other wooden boats. As you can imagine, we tend to get a few calls!
Posted by The Dory Shop |
Two very pleasant weeks with our latest dory building class wrapped up Friday as the group launched the fruit of their labours, the HMLD NAK. The what, you ask? Well, as always, the dory built during the class is available for sale to one of the participants and in this case will find a new home in New Brunswick.
Posted by The Dory Shop |
We are so saddened today to learn of the passing of Edgar Hatt, longtime supplier of knees for our dories and a gentleman whose kind smile and quiet wisdom was admired by all who met him. For more than 60 years, Edgar has provided this most essential component of our Lunenburg-built dories. The work required to harvest Hackmatack knees from the muck of a bog is great indeed. Edgar began as a child working with his father and grandfather. In more recent years, he worked with his own son, Otho.
Posted by The Dory Shop |
Jay is still working away on a lovely steam-bent Alaskan Yellow Cedar dinghy for the Schooner Martha Seabury. It’s a much fussier project than a Banks dory, which planks up lickety-split using nice, wide planks fashioned from pine with no need for a steam box.
Posted by The Dory Shop |
They say that the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. So here goes. I, Dory Plug, have a problem. Please don’t just me too harshly. I’m not really the philandering type but, well, I do tend to fall in love with every new boat we build.
Posted by The Dory Shop |
Jay’s hard at work on a new dory. Or trying to be. There are a lot of tourists strolling along the Lunenburg waterfront on this beautiful sunny day and while we enjoy having an open shop, it can make it a little hard to get to the job at hand.
Posted by The Dory Shop |
Participants in our spring dory course have been working so hard, we figured it was time they got out of The Dory Shop and visited a few of our neighbours in the greater Lunenburg marine trades community. First, it was off to the beehive that is the Michele Stevens Sailloft in Second Peninsula.
Posted by The Dory Shop |
The Hatts were here yesterday with our spring shipment of Hackmatack dory knees. Naturally grown frames, or knees as they are known in dories, are the defining feature of a Lunenburg-built Banks dory. While other ports built their frames using pieces of wood fastened together with a patented metal clip, ours are cut from a single piece of wood. They are not steamed, nor bent, but instead are cut from the lower trunk and roots of the very strong and rot resistant Hackmatack tree. For four generations the Hatt family has supplied The Dory Shop with this critical building material. Edgar Hatt, shown above, began cutting knees with his father Arthur and his grandfather. He now works in the woods with his son.