The Great Lakes Boat Building School is Growing
Epoxyworks last highlighted the Great Lakes Boat Building School (GLBBS) in its Spring 2014 and Spring 2015 issues. The school has come a long way since then. Let’s take a look at what’s changed and glimpse into its exciting future.
Located in Cedarville in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, GLBBS has been training wooden boatbuilders since 2004 and is the only fully accredited marine trades institute in the Great Lakes. Recently, the school expanded to offer two full-time, year-long programs: the Comprehensive Career Boatbuilding program (CCBB) and the Marine
Service Technology (MST) program in partnership with Mercury Marine and the American Boat & Yacht Council (ABYC). Through these two programs, GLBBS has graduated more than 200 students into the marine industry as boatbuilders and service technicians.
The foundation of GLBBS’s success has been its 12-month, three-semester boatbuilding program. It encompasses the three main areas of wooden boat work: traditional construction, wood composite construction, and restoration. In the first semester students learn traditional boatbuilding techniques, how to work with hand tools and identify and select types of wood, and they build small projects such as the classic step stool and oar. Central to the CCBB program is the Indian River Skiff, a small lapstrake rowboat built in the Indian River, Michigan area in the 1920s. Students learn to take measurements from the boat and then develop a set of plans and patterns for the hull. They break into teams to build three of these boats using lapstrake, cedar strip, and fiberglass construction methods.
Semester two focuses on how to build wooden boats the modern way using products like WEST SYSTEM® Epoxy and reinforcing fabrics to ultimately build a lighter and stiffer boat than traditional planking would allow. Students also learn how to repair a wood composite laminate using WEST SYSTEM Epoxy by building a vacuum-bagged hull panel, creating impact damage, and then working to repair the panel with a patch of wood and fiberglass.
The third semester revolves around boat restoration. Students have restored a 1947 Chris Craft Deluxe and a 15" Lyman.
The restoration projects currently