Page 30 - Folk Boat Year Book 2021

Building a Sculling Skiff

You might be wondering what the connection is between building a sculling boat and
a Folkboat. Apart from the reliance on Archimedes and his ideas, the connection is
obscure, but you might be interested in learning that it’s entirely feasible with even
just average home woodworking tools and knowledge as I seek to explain.

At the Lyme Regis Boatbuilding School which I attended for nearly a year’s course in
2002 and where I started building and learning how to build my Nordic Folkboat ‘Lady
Linda’, I remember one of our instructors, the great Jack Chippendale, advocating the
advantages of the ‘stitch and glue’ boatbuilding process for small boats. The very
expression ‘stitch and glue’ didn’t carry much appeal for me at the time, it sounded a
bit ‘Micky Mouse’ especially compared to the established traditional boat building
techniques we were being taught at the time. I was wrong to doubt it. Now I’ve built a
rowing skiff using the stitch and glue technique I know that the method has a lot
going for it. The technique was pioneered by boatbuilders such as Jack Chippendale
and Ken Littledyke in the late 1950s. Many sailors will have sailed or even had a hand
in building the ubiquitous Mirror Dinghy which was offered by TV’s DIY presenter
Barry Bucknell and the famous boat designer and builder, Jack Holt all promoted by
the Daily Mirror. The red sails were a nod to the Daily Mirror’s ‘red top’ reputation.

It all came together when last year I joined the Lymington Amateur Rowing Club and
I’m learning how to scull properly in a quad which is four scullers and a cox. As an
aside I have branched out into a single training scull and have become very interested
in the concept of single sculling. Rowing is a fascinating sport involving precise
technique and balance in propelling the boat as fast and efficiently as possible
through the water at the same time as steering facing the wrong way, I recommend
it. Amateur rowing is a growing sport and indeed coastal sculling has been included as
a new event in the 2024 Olympics.

Rather than borrowing club boats, I thought it would be nice to have a boat of my
own and I decided to build a single scull suitable for the Lymington River and the close
inshore Solent conditions. I researched what was around and found a wide range of
various river and coastal sculling boats available in kit form, mainly from Northeast
American designers. Having learnt how to build a boat from scratch using traditional
techniques, I decided that it was unnecessarily expensive to go down the kit route
and so I decided to buy the drawings and guidance manual of an Oxford Shell MkII
which has been developed by Chesapeake Light Craft through their UK supplier, Fyne
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