The Ash Breeze, Winter 2022

By Andy Wolfe. Photos by Brad Dimock.
A new Dory documentation project, titled The Milford Buchanan Project, has been awarded a $2,000 John Gardner Grant. With funding from the Traditional Small Craft Association and others, Graham McKay, head boatbuilder at Lowell’s Boat Shop on the Merrimac River in Amesbury, Massachusetts; Douglas Brooks, an expert at recording endangered building methods; and Brad Dimock, a dory builder from the American southwest will travel to Shelburne, Nova Scotia, for a two-week stay to build a Banks Dory with Milford Buchanan and record his historic techniques and building nuances before he is gone.

“This is especially of interest to me,” said McKay, “because the building methods employed by the Shelburne Dory Shop were never recorded, and the chain of knowledge rusted and essentially broke in the 1990s. I have spent fifteen years trying to relearn everything.” This project will inform our building methods and preserve and record those from a true old timer.

The three traditional small craft experts will spend two weeks building a traditional Banks Dory with Milford using his patterns, jigs, tools, and experience. By building this dory alongside Milford, McKay said, “We can record his methods and the nuances practiced at the Shelburne Dory Shop.” McKay is uniquely positioned to distinguish the nuances in construction and style, and Douglas Brooks is a brilliant recorder of historical boatbuilding techniques. This duo, along with Brad Dimock’s long friendship with Milford, promise to record valuable endangered cultural heritage of both the United States and Canada.

Funding for the project will be provided by the TSCA,the Fleetwing Foundation (a Massachusetts-based foundation that has a history of supporting Lowell’s Boat Shop), and accumulated credit card points accrued by the Lowell’s Boat Shop.