In September 2010 Luke Powell of Working Sail begins to build the 42-foot Pilot Cutter Freja. The loft floor is laid down. It is made up of four pieces of plywood painted white, onto them a grid of squares is drawn with blue chalk and the plans of the boat are transferred. The plans for a boat are called line drawings, each square on them represents a 1-foot square on the loft floor.

The body drawings have been transferred from the plans onto the loft floor. They show the frames from the middle of the boat to the bow on one side and the middle of the boat to the stern on the other side. From these drawings hardboard templates can be made for the 7 pieces that make up each full-frame, three each side and a floor. As I draw the carefully stacked planks of wood are toppled. Luke selects a plank because of its shape and the curve of the grain and lays a template on it. The outline is chalked, James cuts it out with a chainsaw and marks it with the frame number and restacks it. There is an enormous pile of wasted wood.

It is a beautiful sunny September day. Visitors stroll around the boatyard and boatbuilding becomes a spectator sport. The enormous piles of wood are shrinking. In their place are stacks of freshly cut and numbered frames that attract the wood wasps. The keel has been shaped with a groove cut along its length ready to take the garboard plank. When the keel needs to be turned over, so the slots for the frame floors can be chiselled out. A length of wood is clamped to the side and used to lever it over 90 degrees. Repeat the process for a 180 degree turn. I dread to think how much this one piece of wood weighs. The keel, stem and sternpost are made of the African hardwood Opepe and the frames are made of green oak.

The completed frames are numbered. The waterline is carefully drawn onto each one and they are stacked out of the way. The loft floor is removed and chains and blocks and tackles are hung from the ceiling. These are used to manoeuvre the keel into place. A large groove or mortise has been cut into each end of the keel and a tenon has been cut into the bottom end of both the stem and sternpost, allowing them to all be slotted together.

The block and tackle is used to lift and slot the enormous stem and sternpost into place. They are checked and rechecked until there is a perfect fit with the keel, the angles must be correct. The pieces that make up the deadwood are fitted behind them. Luke drills holes through the sternpost, keel, stem and deadwood where they will join. At the widest point this means drilling a hole three foot long. Jim-Bob cuts a diamond shape above each drilled hole. This is for the heads of the copper fastenings.

The keel, deadwood, stem and sternpost are all joined together using traditional copper fastenings. This is called ‘through clenching’. Luke makes the fastenings by putting 7/8ths inch diameter copper bar vertically into a vice with the end sticking out. An inch thick sheet of steel (with a hole in it the same diameter as the copper bar) is threaded onto the bar, and rests on the top of the vice. Luke checks to make sure the copper bar sticks up 1 and 3/4 inches above the steel plate. He heats the copper with an oxyacetylene torch until it is cherry red in colour, and soft like toffee, and then he hits it with a hammer to form a head. The keel and deadwood that have been dry fitted are taken apart. Bitumen paint is painted on the joins and the whole thing is reassembled on its side. The copper fastenings are driven through the pre-drilled holes with a sledgehammer. Then a thin sheet of metal is threaded over the copper bar to protect the wood from scorching. The copper fastening is heated up and hit with a sledgehammer to form the head. This joins everything securely together like a rivet.

Jim Bob has shaped the garboard plank and fastened it and the hull plank above to the frames with bronze fastenings. Pitch has been heated up and poured into the cavity behind these planks. This stops sawdust collecting now. Later it will channel any water that gets into the bilges down to where the bilge pumps will be, so that it does not sit against the wood and cause rot.

The hull planks are shaped and steamed to bend them around the frames. The steamer is made our of half an oil tank and a beer keg, heated with a fire from the off-cuts of wood.

Pieces of larch have been glued with epoxy and clamped together. Later they will be shaped into the gaff and boom. Jim Bob is cutting and shaping the rudder, Luke has been getting him to work away from the boat, while James fairs up the inside of the hull and paints it.

All the transom planking is now complete, there is a gap between it and the capping rail. Through the gap you can see the finished bulwarks, and the round holes for the fairleads in the bow.

The spars are stored until they are needed. The deck planks are stacked up waiting to be routed. They will be finished on the underneath with a decorative bead that will show on the deck-head, and on the top a groove is routed on to both edges for the deck caulk. After the planks are routed the deck-head side is given a coat of white primer before they are fitted.

View through the opening of the companionway hatch, and Luke spot welding the frame for the engine bed.

An extra long drill bit is used to drill vertically through the coach roof deck-beams, and the sides of the hatch, or combings. The frame for the forward butterfly hatch is partially completed.

Anders and Marion Johnson, who have commissioned Freja to be built, have come to see her for the first time. For a week they measure and re-measure, before the final decisions are made about the layout of the interior. The paint for the hull arrives and Marion cannot resist painting a couple of test patches onto the hull. James is dog-sitting Teddy the Jack Russell.

Last week was a painting week. The entire interior has been given several coats of grey undercoat, and all the deck-beams and deck-head have been painted with white gloss. The interior layout has been finalised, and Luke has fitted two oak posts, which will become the ends of the bulkheads. They will separate the saloon from, on one side the galley, and on the other side the chart table.

James has been shaping the main mast. First the tree is made square, and then it is tapered 1" along its length, so that the bottom or heel measures 9 and 1/4" in diameter and the top is 8 and 1/4" in diameter. Further tapers are added before the mast is made round.