Learn From The Masters
Welcome to WoodenBoat’s Mastering Skills, a membership website dedicated to the craft and ancillary disciplines of wooden boat building. Videos are at the heart of Mastering Skills: we post new ones regularly. In each installment, we deliver an in-depth lesson on boatbuilding, seamanship, or a related craft. We also deliver inspiration in our occasional series WoodenBoat Legends, which tours our viewers through some of the world’s best boats. A Mastering Skills membership includes access to every video we’ve ever posted (video series index), plus admission to an ever-growing library of books and an archive of articles from the pages of our print magazine, WoodenBoat. Members have access as long as their account is active.
Videos
Our videos offer both brief, and in-depth, lessons in boatbuilding, seamanship, and related crafts; they also deliver inspiration in the series WoodenBoat Legends, which tours viewers through the world’s best wooden boats, and connection with WoodenBoat luminaries through the series WoodenBoat Live.
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Season 1
Basic boatbuilding: reading plans, hanging planks, interior joinery, and half models
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Season 2
The basics—and more: painting, tools, sparmaking, and wooden canoes
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Season 3
Join us for Season 3, starting with small shop tools.
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Season 4
Join us for Season 4, starting with refastening wooden hulls
Popular Videos
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Online Exclusives
Online Exclusives brings together the full breadth of the WoodenBoat experience—from Maritime Life & Traditions to Getting Started in Boats, Study Plans, and a growing collection of Digital Books. It’s a place to learn, explore, and keep building your knowledge, all in one place.
Getting Started in Boats
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Volume 1
Building the Lumberyard Skiff
Volume 2
Finishing the Lumberyard Skiff
Volume 3
Building the Peace Canoe, Part 1
Volume 4
Building the Peace Canoe, Part 2
Volume 6
An Introduction to Strip Planking
From the Archive
From the Archive offers a curated selection of articles from past issues of WoodenBoat—timeless stories, practical knowledge, and memorable boats brought back into view. It’s a chance to revisit the depth of the magazine and rediscover pieces worth reading again.
Boats
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How to Make a Boatbuilding Handsaw
Western saws have the advantage of being easily resharpened. For boatbuilding work, author Harry...
Applying Gold Leaf to Lettering
The art of gilding—applying thin sheets of gold leaf onto a surface—has been in...
A Short Discourse on Metal Files
Files come in a variety of coarseness and types of cut. This guide outlines...
Painting SYMRA
Photographs by Nancy Bourne Haley YMRA is a classic wooden sloop designed by John...
How to Build a Wooden Mast
ISLA, New York 32 No.10 (of a total of 20), was thoroughly rebuilt by...
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