The Epoxy Bonds
Modernized wooden boating constitutes a third significant genre of wooden boating. Starting from the 1970s in the United States and in the early 1990s in Finland, it became commonplace to argue that modern materials and designs could re-establish the competitiveness of wood as a boat-building material. In Finland, these claims led wooden boats to be included in technology policy, and to the renewal and in many cases to the establishment of educational institutes for wooden boat-building both at vocational and at polytechnic level. Such institutions imported knowledge from the United States to Finland through the mobility and extended visits of staff in both directions. The results of this exchange were many. Composite structures of wood, fibre-glass and epoxy resins were the concrete outcomes of these efforts. Such outcomes blurred the boundary between fibre-glass and wood. Wooden boats could, when desired, be made to imitate the appearance of those made from fibre-glass. In addition, aspects like those of convenience and ease of maintenance have also begun to converge. In establishing a new discourse of modern boat-building, it was essential to argue that wooden boats are distinct and that they can nonetheless match fibre-glass in terms of convenience and maintenance.
Each of these genres could, of course, be divided into further categories. Yet these three selected types revolve around a handful of essential differences and distinguishing features. The vernacular boats draw on nostalgia, on the deliberate inconvenience of the objects, on the roughness of finishes, and on the presumed character of the working sailors whose style is imitated. On the other hand, the vintage fleet revolves around notions of elegance. The skills of appreciating and representing these boats as aesthetically superior objects are at the core of this practice. These boats consequently serve to construct and articulate social distinctions. Whereas the replication of vernacular boats is frequently driven by interests in maintaining the diversity of traditional boat-building skills, the practices of vintage yachting focus on particular objects per se, and on their qualities as priceless embodiments of very specific skills. Finally, the modernization of wooden boat-building represents a subtle attempt to merge craft production with capitalistic interests and to exploit the image of wooden boats as one-off hand-crafted items. Unlike forms associated with replicas and the vintage yachts, modernized wooden boat-building is positioned in direct relation to the mass-manufacturing of fibre-glass boats, and with comparable qualities like those of price and convenience.
Making Time
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