Boatbuilding terms

Throughout history boatbuilders and sailors have developed their own vocabulary to describe boats and their parts. Your job will be easier if you learn the nautical names of the parts that you will be dealing with:

- Beam : the width of a boat. Also a deck re-inforcement

- Bow : the front end of a boat

- Breasthook : a triangular piece of wood that reinforces the stems of a boat

- Chines : wooden strips that run the length of some boats and connect the sides to the bottom. Also the intersection between hull panels

- Fair curve : a curve that looks smooth, without any bumps or hollows

- Fillet : a radiused mixture of thickened epoxy formed at the intersection of two hull panels

- Frame : a permanent wooden assembly that gives a boat its shape while it is being built. If it is removed from the boat after it is assembled, it is called a mold

- Gain : a ramping bevel cut into the end of a lapstrake plank that lets the stems fair in smoothly
- Garboard : the bottom-most plank on a boat; the one closest to the keel

- Gunwales : the wooden strips that run the length of the outside of a boat that strengthen the hull and protects the sides from damage. Also called rub-rails

- Hull : the basic body of a boat without the seats, hardware, sails, etc.
- Inwales : wooden strips that run lengthwise inside a hull at the sheer line.

- Lapstrake : a boatbuilding method with each plank overlapping the one below it

- Line : the overall shape of a boat, as in "she has pretty lines",; also a piece of rope on a boat

- Lining off : the process of laying out the shape of the planks on a lapstrake boat

- Mold : a frame member that is removed from the hull after construction is complete

- Painter : a piece of line at the bow of a boat that is used for towing or tying to a dock

- Port side : the left side of a boat

- Ribbands : wooden strips that define the shape of the planks on a lapstrake hull

- Sheer : the side view of the line where the side of a boat meets the deck

- Sheer strake : the top-most plank on a lapstrake boat

- Starboard Side : the right side of a boat.

- Stem : the wooden piece at the bow of a boat that connects the sides (Your canoe is pointed at both ends, and therefore has a stem at both ends ).

- Stern : the back of a boat.

- Stretcher : the temporary brace used to set the beam of a boat to it's correct measurement.

- Strongback : a sturdy framework that's used in traditional lapstrake construction

- Thwart : a wooden piece that runs across the hull at about the middle of the sheer line

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