Design – Page 2 – Boats & Builders

Edgar Butt

November 13, 2012March 2, 2016Crystal Braye

After the owners ran into financing problems, construction on the pulp and paper mill was haulted. Today the Mill still stands in its incomplete state, untouched since the 1920’s. — After the owners ran into financing problems, construction on the pulp and paper mill was haulted. Today the Mill still stands in its incomplete state, untouched since the 1920s.

Edgar Butt was born in Glovertown in 1926. Son of Joseph and Patience (nee Greening), Edgar was the last of their children and the only to be born in Glovertown. His parents moved their family from Flat Island to Glovertown in 1921, with the promise of work with the pulp and paper mill that was scheduled to open the following year.

At the age of fourteen, Edgar began working at a wood working factory owned by Arthur J. House. He worked with House for number of years in Glovertown, St. John’s, and briefly in Corner Brook, before returning to Glovertown with his wife Patricia to raise their family.

Stewart Sturge’s Rodney

November 8, 2012March 2, 2016Crystal Braye

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Built over winter 2011-2012, her knees were taken from a juniper (tamarack) tree that was uprooted during Hurricane Igor. All the wood for this rodney was harvested by Stewart and his wife Julia.

Sam Feltham’s Punt

November 5, 2012March 2, 2016Crystal Braye

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P062912_Sam-Feltham-10 — Unable to acquire an appropriate knee for the stern, Sam imporvised with the materials he had available.

Sam Feltham learned how to build boats on Deer Island using cut timbers, but has been using steamed laths since moving to Glovertown in 1954. This punt, completed in August 2012, is just one of more than 100 boats built by Sam over the years. While Sam would normally cut his own wood, he finds it increasingly difficult to find suitable timbers. For this punt, Sam used store-bought spruce.

Typically, says Sam, “we would cut a knee in the woods – a flaring knee, with an angle about 18 degrees – for the stern.”

Jack Casey: Building with Moulds

October 28, 2012March 10, 2016Crystal Braye

P092712_Jack-Casey-14 — Michael Casey’s initials found on a rising board in the set of moulds passed down to Jack Casey.

P092712_Jack-Casey-29 When building boats, Jack Casey uses a set of moulds that once belonged to his grandfather, Michael Casey. When Michael Casey arrived in Conche in 1850, he made a set of moulds which he used to build his fishing boats. Passed down to his son Michael Patrick, and from there to Jack, these moulds were used to build rodneys and punts for 160 years.

Jack Casey’s Punt

October 27, 2012March 2, 2016Crystal Braye

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Jack Casey built his last boat, a sixteen foot row punt, in 2009 at eighty-eight years old. Used by Wally Skinner of Pasadena, she is twenty-seven inches deep and sixty inches wide at midships.

Max Pollard’s Punt

October 25, 2012March 2, 2016Crystal Braye

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P092712_Max-Pollard-35 Built in Pasadena in 2008, Max Pollard constructed this punt for his daughter with timber cut in his own backyard. Used at Old Man’s Pond, Max made repairs in 2012 which included replacing a number of rotting timbers and the top two counter boards.

Puzzled by the disbursement of the rot, Max can only speculate on the cause. “I don’t know if freshwater makes that much difference to the wood, but she’s very rotten – in only four years.”

Learning the Three Piece Mould

February 22, 2011March 2, 2016Admin

By Jerome Canning

The three-piece mould is an old method for designing and building boats. A lot of the first boats to come off our beaches and take to the fishing waters were boats built with these curved sticks of wood. The method was widely used in Newfoundland and Labrador in the 1800s. Moulds still survive in some communities; but mostly as items saved from the old boat sheds of our past builders.

Samuel Andrews’ Four-Oared Punt

February 18, 2011March 2, 2016Admin

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Samuel Andrews built this four-oared punt in Winterton during the 1930s-1940s. It measures 15’6” long and was used during the winter for hunting seals and sea-birds. Built with thin planking and a smaller frame, it was designed to be lightweight and maneuverable through the ice.

While the difference between a punt and rodney varies throughout Newfoundland and Labrador, in Winterton, the two are remarkably similar with only a few slight distinctions.

Frank Lane’s Punt

February 17, 2011March 2, 2016Admin

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Whole Moulding

February 12, 2011March 2, 2016Admin

One method of boat design used by wooden boat builders in Newfoundland can be traced to a method of design employed by English shipwrights in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.[1] Known as “whole-moulding,” this method was brought by those who settled in Newfoundland during the same period.

Three-Piece Mould

February 11, 2011March 2, 2016Admin

David A. Taylor describes the three-piece mould method used by boatbuilders in Winterton, Trinity Bay. Similar to whole-moulding, Taylor describes these moulds as, “a wooden, three-piece adjustable template used to draw the shapes of the three principle timber pairs”.

One of three methods of design Taylor observed among Winterton builders during his research in the 1970s, the three-pieces were referred to collectively as “moulds”.