School of Wooden Boat Building

On the Huon River at Franklin, 48km south of Hobart, is a school with a difference. We teach the old traditional skills of wooden boatbuilding to a new generation of craftspeople from all over the world. The Wooden Boat School provides the only course where students create a full-sized, carvel planked, sea-going cruising vessel "from lofting to launch" as part of their program.

Many of the schools graduates have gone on to build careers in boatbuilding, all over Australia and internationally.

Click here for more information on the Wooden Boat School.

The main emphasis is on the use of Tasmania’s unique boatbuilding timbers – the legendary Huon Pine, as well as King Billy Pine, Celery Top and Tasmanian Blue Gum. Using timbers of this quality and scarcity is a cherished privilege: it demands a commitment to high-quality craftsmanship in the building, and longevity and repairability in the product.

Wooden Boat Discovery Centre

Alongside the school workshops is a Wooden Boat Discovery Centre, where visitors can enter the wonderful world of wooden boats – their history, their construction, their use, the tools that shape them, the peculiar names and terms for things, the atmosphere of the wooden boat workshop. Visitors also watch the school and its students at work, and can come back again and again to see the various boats – and the skills that produce them – growing and taking shape over time. Click here to learn more about the Wooden Boat Discovery Centre.