Boat building seems like it would be the provenance of your fairly well-kitted shop, right? Not so. At least, not for a man in Homer, Alaska. Using dory-style plywood, fiberglass, and epoxy, Renn Tolman has made more than 100 boats in his home shop.
Just recently, Tolman crafted his 104th boat. And we’re not talking a small, rowboat style craft. No, this latest is 20 feet long, a Standard Tolman skiff. The vessel is extremely seaworthy, ready to brave chop and storm.
The entire boat is extremely well-fashioned, with fiberglass reinforcing wood on every surface. Overall, the boat took about five weeks in shop to make, along with a few extra days to install its 60 horsepower four-stroke outboard engine.
Tolman is a great, lifelong success story that shows that fiberglass and composites aren’t just in the realm of the industrial power generation industry.
