Juniper Dust: Our Blog

Bringing Back the Juniper By Catherine Kozak WANCHESE -- The juniper wood so prized for wooden boats and cedar shakes is tough to come by nowadays in Eastern North Carolina, where stands of Atlantic white cedar had once thrived in the coastal swamplands before logging...

I'm really excited about this 19' design. It has an aggressive entry and a considerable amount of flare, as well as a similar tunnel to my other tunnel designs. The running bottom is similar to that of my 22' in that it has a pronounced entry while still having a...

The south bay of the shop has been filling up with historic and classic boat projects for maintenance and repairs. One of the things that makes my job so fun is getting to study these boats, whether they're built locally or "from off," while we're working...

Harrison Boatworks has moved to a new location in Wanchese at 952 Old Wharf Road. It was very sad to leave Sunnyside on the north end of Roanoke Island, where I built boats for more than a dozen years. But the new shop is proving to be a very good thing...

We're wrapping up the 22' and this week we've been putting the initial 10 hours of break-in on the 150hp Yamaha. We're finding that the 22' hull in combination with the 150 and jackplate are extremely fuel efficient, plus we can sneak into less than a foot...

During the refit of the Bi-Op-Sea, I was asked to replicate the existing ladder-back teak helm chair. I began by making patterns of the individual parts of the chair. After construction and assembly, I wasn't even halfway done. The majority of the labor...

We launched the 22' Center Console boat a couple of weeks ago for a float test, to reassure the decisions on the self-baling deck and to see how she sat in the water before she's loaded. I'm very happy with the way she sits; she looks like she'll be a good...

It is a very rare thing to have the privilege of taking a boat from a design on paper through a top-end custom build and on to its final destination. I was lucky enough to build a high-end center console Carolina sportfishing boat for a friend who...

About two years ago, I received a phone call from Andrew Hampson to discuss the prospects of building one of the tunnel skiffs that he had seen on my website. After getting to know his needs and requirements over the course of a half-dozen 30-minute phone...

Welcome to the new website for Harrison Boatworks. Juniper Dust is intended to chronicle the different projects at Harrison Boatworks and to share my thoughts and opinions about what’s going on in the boat-building world. Some blogs will be...