I started building boats in 1978, and only once was I able to collect enough crooks for a boat, a New York Whitehall. Its breasthook is apple, the six thwart knees and the bookmatched pair of quarter knees are cherry, and the transom knee is Alaskan yellow cedar. I think they’re easy on the eyes, and even though the boat is now 32 years old, the knees are as good as new. Crooks of sufficient size were hard to find, difficult to season without checks, and awkward to saw into workable stock. In other boats I’ve made straight-grained, laminated, and steam-bent knees, but none took a nice shape as well as the ones I made from crooks.Back in February, Ben Fuller and I were corresponding about a variety of ideas for articles, and he wrote, as an aside to a comment on boom jaws: “And don't get me started about clunky, short-toed fat knees.” When I was looking at knees in the small boats at the Wooden Boat Festival in Port Townsend this past September, I saw a lot of short-toed knees and thought it was time to get Ben "started" and have him write an article. While most of the knees at the festival were one-piece, straight-grained knees, one boat had some very nicely shaped half-lapped knees, but the joints that showed—vertical on one face, horizontal on the other—didn’t look right. I had a boatbuilder friend take a look at them, and he agreed that the shapes were good but the glue lines spoiled the effect. too These knees are very nicely shaped, but the curves can't compete with the rectilinear filler blocks and seams.
Read this article now for Free!
Ready for a second free article? Create a free account by entering your email address and a password below.
— OR —
Subscribe now for $29.99 a year and have immediate access to all of our content, including hundreds of small-boat profiles, gear reviews and techniques, adventure stories, and more! You can also browse our entire archive of back issues starting from September 2014, as well as post unlimited classified ads. This is an extraordinary value!
While I haven’t yet started the build of my first boat, as a woodworker this is a great reference to help me create attractive and strong knees. It will certainly help this novice boatbuilder avoid several rookie mistakes. Great article!