AMC Outdoors, March 2003

Before doing anything else, she cleans her shop, organizing the tools and materials around her. After that, she'll put on some music — folk, maybe, or a little baroque. And then Lynne Paju gets down to business.

A long-time woodworker, Paju — who lives and teaches in western Massachusetts — learned how to saw, sand, and plane because she needed furniture, and building it herself was the economical choice. She went on to complete small projects for others, from bookshelves to countertops. Then, six years ago, Paju stumbled into boatbuilding because, well, she needed a boat. She bought a set of plans for a wooden kayak from a local builder and went to work, measuring and sawing cedar boards, stapling the strips to a skeleton, planing and sanding them, coating the shaped hull with fiberglass and epoxy for strength, and varnishing the finished product.

"You start with a bunch of strips that don't look like anything," she says of this process, which can take 100 hours or more. "It's very gratifying to start from nothing and slowly create a boat that's really beautiful and functional."

Though she owned most of the tools she needed, Paju notes with a laugh that a new project is "always a good opportunity to buy more." She also saw another opportunity: Though there were several boatbuilders in the area, she didn't know of anyone teaching the craft. So she took on the task. "It just clicked for me," she says. "It was a blending of my interests and skills."

Paju's roots as an educator run nearly as deep as her experience as a craftsperson. Having formerly worked with youth in a therapeutic wilderness recreation program, she's currently a part-time teacher and administrator at The Literacy Project, an adult education program with six sites in western Massachusetts.

Now a part-time boatbuilding instructor as well, she offers semi-private lessons for cedar-strip canoes in the shop at her home in Goshen, Mass., a town in the Berkshire foothills whose population numbers less than 1,000. Paju, 40, also instructs at the New England Craft Program at Snow Farm, in nearby Williamsburg, and at schools around the region. Last spring, she worked with a middle-school class at New York's Hudson River Academy to build two flat-bottomed canoes; in the fall, she taught an Elderhostel class whose members all constructed their own wooden kayaks.

Through the classes, she sees students' self-esteem grow, their ability to cooperate improve. "I enjoy helping people feel empowered and confident," she says, adding that she'd like to teach a class for women. She also points out that, while the skills required can be challenging for all students, apprehension is the biggest hurdle to mastering them. Though she performs much of the power-tool prep work — milling and routering boards — students use clamps, electric sanders, block planes, cordless drills, and other small implements. "It's fun to work with folks who have never handled tools," she remarks.

Classes can become frantic as time slips away — Paju recalls once bringing in electric fans to aid the drying of the epoxy — but the pride of new owners erases the memory of that stress. Her tips for those who want to join this proud crowd: Learn as much as you can by reading or surfing the Web; start with a project you know you can make time for; don't be afraid of making mistakes (there's not much you can do wrong that you can't fix). And be ready to answer questions about your work.

Paju predicts, based on her own experience and reports from her former students, that a cedar or other wooden canoe or kayak will draw plenty of attention. The same striking patterns and colors that make the wood satisfying to work with make it eye-catching to strangers: "People will be constantly stopping you. You'll hardly be able to launch it at the put-in."

As for her own launches, Paju enjoys exploring local lakes and rivers. She marvels that wooden kayaks and canoes are "incredibly light and easy to put on the car," with a 35- to 45-pound range. "I can lift it by myself, and I like that independence." But she admits that, despite having taken outdoor leadership and sea-kayaking classes and paddled whitewater, she is "a better boatbuilder than a paddler." And when she dreams of the boating life, it is not water that holds sway, but the idea of opening a full-time shop, a larger space in the Pioneer Valley where she can run classes of her own. "That's my big fantasy," she says.

For now, her small shop will do: a clean workspace, a little music, and wood strips waiting to be sculpted into a buoyant whole. "Once I get in there, I'm happy," she says. "I can get focused and be very content, like no place else."

 To Build a Boat, intro  |  Paul Barton  |  Lynne Paju  |  Adam Bolonsky