Building a Traditional Japanese Boat

Douglas Brooks recently came to the shop to teach a week-long course in traditional Japanese boatbuilding. Students in the course built a 21-foot long traditional river boat from Niigata Prefecture, locally known as nouninawase. These boats were historically used by farmers to haul rice or transport sand when dredging waterways. Students worked almost exclusively with Japanese boatbuilding tools, many of which have no counterpart in the West. The techniques used to construct the boat are also quite different from those used in western boatbuilding; seams are fit watertight using special handsaws and long curved chisels are used to pilot holes for hand-made boat nails.

In Japan, these boats were built of cedar. However, for this workshop, students worked with white pine. The boat nails were hand forged by a blacksmith in Vermont. Participants in the workshop included three of our 2-year apprentices and two outside summer residents. At the end of the workshop, we conducted a Shinto boat launching ceremony. The images below take you through the building process from start to finish.

Boats are built right-side up on the floor rather than on a strongback. They are braced using props that extend from the floor or ceiling.

Planks are saw fit until you get a tight seam. There is no caulking used in the seams.

Once the planks are fit, they get edge-nailed together. Holes are chiseled into both planks and mortises are cut into one of the sides of the planks to receive the nail heads. Here you can see Douglas laying out the mortises to be chiseled.

One of our students is using a special curved chisel to make pilot holes for the nails.

Here you can see the planks being nailed together. They are clamped together so that the nail holes in each plank line up. The handmade nails are pounded through the holes in the mortises into the other plank so that the nail heads sit at the bottom edge of the mortise.

Once the bottom planks are nailed together, they are propped in place and weighted down with rocks. Work can begin on the side planks now.

In the center of the boat, you can see a template showing the angle between the bottom and side planking. This is one of the few specific measurements used to build this boat.

You can see the scarf joint cut in one of the side planks to join two pieces together. The side planks are edge nailed in the same way the bottom planks are.