Dan Lee to teach skiff building in person
Online boat builder Dan Lee is stepping out from behind the camera to teach a two-week face-to-face skiff building course at the Boat Building Academy (BBA).
Lee has developed a global following since taking his passion for pairing modern technology and traditional boat building online. And in 2023, he was awarded a raft of prizes at the Thames Traditional Boat Festival. He also joined Wessex Resins that year to showcase cold moulding veneer using vacuum consolidation, and share designs for Temptress, a 24-foot runabout. Lee presented a quarter-scale model on Wessex’s stand at the Southampton Boat Show. The full-scale version is available as plans or kit.
Videos filmed at his workshop in Gloucestershire feature practises such as CAD design and CNC cutting and routinely attract 30,000 viewers.
His new course at the BBA in Dorset (coming August 2025, more details are available online) will take builders through the process of constructing a simple clinker skiff from a plywood kit, from set-up right through to final finishing and launch.
“Using the latest in CAD design and CNC cutting, we’ll start out the course with a look around a 3D model of what we will be building, before moving on to a pre-cut kit of plywood parts,” he says.
“We’ll learn about the use of CNC cut plywood and jigs within boat building to produce super accurate forms and solid wood laminations. Epoxy work will also play a key role in the building of the skiff, and bonding, coating, filleting and lamination, will all be covered.
“The aim of this course is to embrace the use of this technology in order to get the hull set up and assembled in record time.
“Once we have the hull of our little skiffs built, we will spend our remaining time mastering the art of great varnish and paint finishes on wood. By learning to use modern, two-part paint and varnish systems our boat builders will learn to produce professional quality finishes within a very short timeframe.
“Then we’ll finish up by installing hardware correctly, before launching our boats at Lyme Regis Cobb.”
Lee started sharing his builds on social media about 10 years ago. It was during covid that his hobby started taking up most of his time and he decided to go all in and set up his boat building business.
“The videos have grown and grown in popularity, and I also sell my boat plans, because rather than building one-offs in private, I want people to build the boats and enjoy them,” he says. “It’s been immensely rewarding to help people discover the same love I have for a modern-meets-traditional process.
“Of course, I have become accustomed to instructing in the ‘virtual’ world, so being live and face-to-face with people again at the BBA makes me feel equally excited and daunted. But I think this new course adds a new dimension to the short course programme at the academy.
“I’m very much looking forward to being amongst all their amazing tutors and helping people build some fantastic boats.”
Students will take their own skiff kit away with them at the end of the two weeks, to build at their own leisure, applying everything they have learned.
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