Featured Projects and Classes
White Oak Staircase
Paddle Making on Saint Croix River
Paddle Making on Saint Croix River
Our most recent design-build project featuring beautiful white oak treads from a tree harvested from the owner's land.
Paddle Making on Saint Croix River
Paddle Making on Saint Croix River
Paddle Making on Saint Croix River
Our first destination craft class! A small group camped out on the shore of the St. Croix for two nights, and each participant left on Sunday with a hand-carved cherry paddle for their next adventure.
Building a Lapstrake Skiff
Paddle Making on Saint Croix River
Building a Lapstrake Skiff
Our customer, a skilled woodworker in his own right, partnered with us to build a 13-foot lapstrake skiff from cedar, oak, and mahogany.
About Us
Our Instructors
Phil Winger
The first boat Phil ever built was a scale model of Athenian Trireme. Under its decks, he pasted his favorite passages of Homer's Odyssey, cut out of a weathered copy from a used bookstore. Wooden boatbuilding, adventure, and good storytelling have been central themes in his life for over 25 years.
He had the good fortune to learn from some masters of lapstrake construction, including Geoff Burke and Ray Speck. He has taught wooden boatbuilding in various forms since 2000, and enjoys the transformative impact that it has on students.
Maria Petrova
Maria’s path has been anything but straightforward. Born in Russia, she left her Building’s Restoration program in Moscow for an Architecture degree in Los Angeles. Many roads were traveled since then, across the country and outside of it, but she finally settled in Minneapolis. While in school she spent many sleepless nights at her desk working on projects and strengthening her language skills. But her favorite place to spend time was in the fabrication lab, a special venue for realizing the visions she had for her design work. She enjoys building scale models, concrete casts, shaker boxes, and experimenting with various media to create unique items to high aesthetic standards.