Course Duration: 24 weeks.
Course runs Mon-Thurs 08.00-16.30, Fri 08.00-12.30
At the end of your 24wk course you should have completed and launched a boat of up to 5m in length. Restorations as well as new builds can also be considered subject to suitability. Your skills should allow you to build further craft with similar build techniques, as well as using the transferable nature of these skills to develop further areas of expertise. A full costing exercise will be undertaken as part of the build process.
Introduction
Today’s boat builder needs a wide variety of skills. You must understand the proper use of wood and G.R.P. (glass reinforced plastics), and must have an understanding of how engines, plumbing and electrics systems are installed. You must know how to cost your work. You must be aware of new technology and yet be able to repair or restore boats built fifty years ago or more.
Being able to build a boat beautifully is not enough. It may give tremendous self- satisfaction, however, at the end of the day, it must also lead to being able to provide reasonably comfortably for yourself and your family. It is for this reason that the IBTC, uniquely, ensures that its instructors are not only expert in their professions but also have real world proven, successful, experience in the boatbuilding business.
The IBTC Concept of Training Experience has shown that training opportunities limited to just two or three boats is totally insufficient – which is why the IBTC always has a wide variety of boats, both large and small, at different stages of construction at any one time. This ensures that there is always a boat available and at a stage which will enable trainees to build skills in a truly systematic and properly structured way. You do not have to wait for a boat to reach a certain stage of construction before you are able to move on, and you are always able to continue to the next stage of learning once you have satisfactorily completed each exercise. It is a very important concept of IBTC training that the boats built, repaired or restored as training exercises are only worked on whenever they present the opportunity for appropriately timed exercises for students. High standards of accuracy and finish are set from the start of each course. Our concept of training enables our students to cover and learn the wide range of skills in our training programme in the shortest time possible. It ensures, too, that by the end of their course, you will have the ability and confidence to build, repair or restore a boat. Almost all learning is through practical exercises, (learning by doing), with the essential knowledge element fed in by instructors at the relevant moment. This huge amount of practical experience is one of the many reasons why IBTC students remain head and shoulders above others.
The Training Modules
You will undertake the basic joinery course and as many of the other relevant courses as required within the time constraint to complete your project. The exact make up of your course will be discussed before commencing. Progress through the modules will be at your own pace and dependent on your individual skill level.
Below are the modules which will be covered in this course. For more detailed information regarding each module, please download the course prospectus.
- Basic Joinery
- Lofting Exercise
- Optional GRP module
- Optional Stitch and Glue boatbuilding exercise
- Optional Backbone construction, Laminations and Knees
- Optional Clinker planking
- Optional Carvel Planking
- Optional Block making, splicing and knot work
- Optional Painting Varnishing and finishing
- Optional Wooden Boat Restoration
- Optional Stern tubes and prop shaft boring
- Optional Decks and decking and above deck structures
- Lofting chosen boat and prepare moulds and strong back, order materials
- Build
- Spars and rigging
- Optional Finishing and completion of Recreational Craft Directive manual
- Launch Party and tweaking