Callum Reith

Callum Reith had built furniture for years, but never a boat. He rented a boathouse on the shore of a loch near Inverness for the summer, and a sawmill neighbour let him cut larch from a fallen tree that would otherwise have gone for firewood.

He learnt the first four weeks from his mentor and from a book with a cracked spine. He milled the larch himself, stacked it in the boathouse rafters to dry, and spent the first fortnight making a set of moulds and a keel that he later called the best part of the project. Nothing in the book had prepared him for how much a plank twists.

The hull took six weeks of planking, with each plank shaped on the bench before it was fitted. He kept a tally of mistakes on the wall and reached sixty-three. Most were small: a bevel cut on the wrong side, a rivet set crooked. Two cost him a plank each, and one cost him an afternoon he spent mostly in silence.

His mentor, a boatbuilder in his seventies, drove up twice and did not touch the boat on either visit. He ran a thumb along the seams, told Callum the third plank on the port side was the best in the boat, and left a bag of copper rivets on the bench.

The boat was launched on the last Sunday of the fellowship, on a loch, in light rain, and it floated. One Small Boat is now used most weekends. A set of photographs of the build, with the tally from the wall, is on the fellows page.