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Wooden Boat Building and Restoration

I’m Kevin Pagliuca, boatwright and proprietor of Timeless Boatworks, a one-man wooden boat-shop specializing in the construction of glued lapstrake wooden boats. I work on boats one-at-time from start to completion. I have been operating Timeless Boatworks since 2012.

I first learned woodworking as a vocational high school student. After graduating, I went on to work as a cabinet maker at a commercial custom cabinet and millwork shop in my home town of Arlington, Massachusetts (the birthplace of Uncle Sam). At 24 years of age, persuaded that cabinet making was a dying trade, I reluctantly resigned my position at the cabinet shop and enrolled as a non-traditional college student. I earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science and moved on to a successful Information Technology (IT) career. The woodworking bug persisted throughout my career, and it became a passionate hobby. After 26 years I yearned to change my career back to working with my hands and retired from my IT career in 2010. I moved on to attend and graduate from a wooden boat building school where I felt privileged to learn both traditional and composite wooden building skills under the exceptional instruction of Patrick Mahon, a well respected highly experienced master shipwright.

I was first around wooden boats in the 1960's as a young boy, while staying with my grandparents at their summer cottage in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Those timeless wooden boats that I saw gliding along the water, floating at their moorings, and tied up at private docks have always stuck with me. Wooden boats are indeed to be admired. I worked on my first wooden skiff at 10 years of age, under my grandfather's supervision. Its my grandfather, Angelo Pagliuca, whom I most credit with teaching me to do things right, to take pride in your work as well as working with your hands. Together, we got it seaworthy and I rowed it regualry, single handily, on the Wareham River behind the cottage in Wareham, Massachusetts. Even that young, I enjoyed working on wooden boats just as much as being out on the water in them.

Good craftsmanship is at the core of my work ethnic. With all the curved, beveled, and angled wood parts that a boat is composed of, the use of the standard stationary woodworking power tools typically found in most modern cabinet shops is not always a viable option for the boatwright. Instead many parts require shaping using hand tools. Chisels, planes, spoke shaves, and hand saws all require a skilled craftsman to not only decide which and when to use, but also to know how to use them effectively, as well as knowing how to keep them sharp. This is what I like best in building a boat, the challenge of figuring out the shapes of the individual wood parts, molding the shapes with my hands, and then finally fitting them together to form a beautiful wooden boat. There is a great satisfaction in having built a wooden boat well.

 

He who works with his hands is a laborer.

He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman.

He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist.

Louis Nizer