Handbuilt by Alex Comb

Builders of
Wood & Canvas Canoes
Wooden Kayaks and Classic Rowing Boats

Rowboats:

Wooden Row Boats

Click photo to enlarge

Finnish Pulling Boat
14' Row Boat

This is a boat that the Finnish Language campus of Concordia College commissioned to be built. It is a copy of a traditional fishing boat from the Savo province of Finland.

The boat has the classic Scandanavian stem profile and a superb slack-bilge arched hull. This hull shape will seem "lively" to the uninitiated, though the final stability of this boat is extraordinary, as it needed to be for fisherment to pull in their nets over the sides of the boat. The keel line is very nearly straight, helping the boat to maintain its course, though the significant deadrise in the sides, especially at the stern, make this a very manueverable boat and really quite quick for a boat of this length and width.

I build this boat with White Cedar lapstrake planking on White Oak steam-bent frames. Planking is rivited at the laps and to the frames with copper nails and roves. All other fastenings are silicon bronze. Gunwales are White Oak, though inwales are Douglas Fir or Sitka Spruce. Seats are usually Western Red Cedar. The exterior of the hull is painted, leaving the gunwale and transom finished bright. The interior is treated with the traditional mixture of pine tar, boiled linseed oil and turpentine. This finish will help preserve the wood and allow it to "breathe" so that moisture is not trapped beneath the finish. The mixture should be applied once a year to keep your boat preserved. This is a working boat finish and the wood may blacken with age. A varnish finish could be applied if the boat is allowed to dry out and is kept out of the weather when not in use.

P.O. Box 297 • Knife River, Minnesota 55609
Phone & Fax: 218.834.2506
E-mail:  acomb@frontiernet.net 
© Copyright  Alex Comb of Stewart River Boatworks