Craftsmanship V
Art of the oar
Collars oar-maker Lee Gabel talks about the dignity of craftsmanship and the joy of an elegant curve. By Peter Willis, photos by Emily Harris
isitors to Classic Boat’s stand at the London Boat Show have always been fascinated to watch Lee Gabel of Collars making oars entirely by hand. Some of them assume that
this is just for show, and there must be a lathe ‘back at the factory’. Lee patiently points out that an oar is oval in section, and you can’t do that on a lathe. Even so, I’m surprised to find how little time it does take him to fashion an oar. “Three hours. So normally six hours for a pair of skiff oars. A Cornish gig oar will take six hours for the one oar – they’re twice the size, with big blades,” he tells me when we meet. “I like oars,” Lee adds, reflectively. “Oars are great.
It’s lovely shaping the blades, curving like sculpture.” The art is in getting the correct curve of the spoon, and to achieve this, Lee uses planes he’s made himself. “It’s not difficult – a piece of beech or maple for the block, then I shape the tongue on a grindstone and sharpen it when it’s to a shape I like. On one oar, I’d use four different planes on the spoon – a jack plane, a smoothing plane and two hollowing planes, plus a spokeshave on the handle and on areas of the blade, and a rasp.” The wood used is Sitka spruce – light, strong and springy, but with an ash tip glued onto each blade to protect it from scrapes – the tip is 1¹
/8 in (29mm) deep,
5/16in (8mm) thick and runs the full width of the blade, shaped to follow its curve. The loom of the oar, the main length of it, may well be oval, Lee explains. The handle is moulded to the hand, and about 5in (13cm) long for one of a pair, or if it’s for two hands, as in a gig, then it will be 12in (31cm) long and completely round. Lee’s journey into oar-making started somewhat improbably at Leeds College of Music, where he learnt to make guitars – “which takes a lot more precision,” as he points out. “With spar-making you’ve got a lot more leeway – say a 2mm tolerance.”
Above: A pair of skiff oars takes six hours’ work
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Then he wanted to move to Oxford to be with his girlfriend – now his wife – who was studying there, and so applied for an advertised job at Collars. That was in 2000, when he was 25. “I started at the bottom.” Since then he’s risen to become a director, and does a lot of
CLASSIC BOAT JUNE 2012
“Craftsmen are intelligent – we’re better when we’re using tools”
the training up of new employees. “Dealing with hand tools – drawknives, spokeshaves, planes, learning how to hold them and handle them – is often quite alien to them. It can take a bit of time for them to develop those twitch muscles that become second nature when you’re accustomed to using them.” Trainees come from a range of backgrounds: “Career- changers, accountants or people who’ve worked with furniture, and a few who’ve come straight from school and have no experience. It’s hard to tell how people will develop – those that look good on paper can turn out to be not as good as people with no experience.” One gets the feeling, talking to Lee, that he believes craftsmen are born, not made. “Some people aren’t good at working sitting down,” is how he puts it. “I didn’t learn that well at school – I wanted to be up and about. I always enjoyed working with wood, even as a boy.” We agree that craftsmen don’t always get the respect they deserve. Their skills “shouldn’t be looked down on”, Lee insists. He sums it up pretty neatly: “Craftsmen are intelligent people – we’re better when we’re using tools.”
The skill of using tools is in meeting the challenges of what these days are called ‘resistant materials’ in schools. Lee is always up for a challenge.
“I like doing the pear-shaped masts for Folkboats or X-One-Designs or Salcombe Yawls.” These have a broad leading section, narrowing to where the luff groove or track is attached. And they’re tapered. The longest spar he’s done is over 90ft (27.4m): a long, thin racing mast. Possibly the biggest in terms of girth was Merrymaid’s boom. And the most interesting? “I made a boom for a Viking longship that had a six-sided section, which is a lot more complicated than eight-sided.” Lee’s also produced spars for Mariquita and Cometa, though a lot of the time, he admits he doesn’t know the destination of the gaff, jackyard, spinnaker pole or boom he’s working on. “I just get given a drawing and get on with it. People come up to me, especially at boat shows, and say ‘You made such-and-such’. Did I?”
Tel: +44 (0)1865 341277,
www.collars.co.uk
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