Hands-On Wooden Boat Restoration: Rowboat Recanvassing

Each month, the museum highlights the restoration efforts on one boat in our collection. For four weeks, we offer the public a hands-on seminar with master shipwright and Wooden Boat School lead instructor Wayne Ford that focuses on the restoration needs of that vessel. For the month of December, we focus on recanvassing one of two Penn Yan Car Topper rowboats in our collection. The canvas will be stretched, stapled to the hull and cut, with a coating applied later. The work will take place indoors in our woodworking shop. Nestled in the Finger Lakes region of New York State, the Penn Yan Boat Company's popular model was introduced in 1936. Designed to be light and narrow enough to fit on top of most cars of that era, Penn Yan marketed it as being easily lifted by two people.

Take this opportunity to learn aspects of wooden boat restoration that you can apply to your own boat. Join us for as many of these Tuesday sessions as you like, whether just one or up to four. For this December course, we recommend coming to the first session especially