BELMONT – Restoring boats for some people is a task. For master carpenter and ship craftsman Steve Dami, it’s more than a pasttime. It’s a devotion.

Dami built his first wooden canoe in his early teens. The Granite Stater had a school project and started woodworking in middle school. His first project was a handmade napkin holder, which his father still has on his table to this day.

“That’s been forty years or so,” he said. “A buddy of mine and I decided we wanted to build wooden canoes. So, we got a book and some plans and talked the woodshop teacher into letting us build some canoes wrapped in fiberglass. And ever since then, I’ve just been in love with wooden boats.”

Growing up on Winnesquam where his family once lived, a neighbor of the Damis owned an antique boat restoration business.

“Man, he would bring these things up from Hooksett every weekend,” Dami said. “And we’d get to tool around on the lake in them. It was an amazing experience to be a young teenager cruising the lake in an old wooden boat. It was like king of the world out there. I think that’s where it all started.”

Carpentry came to Dami easily. He said it’s the basic skill set and the ability to use the same tools that go into boat restoration or any type of carpentry.

“When we were kids, my dad built a house and we were all required to assist,” he said. “So, I learned basic construction there. And most of my life, I’ve had a professional job in an office. I started life as a quality engineer doing woodworking on the side.”

Dami always had a small woodshop, despite his job as an engineer working with diverse companies, including one in aerospace.

“It was a nightmare,” he said.

“It was 65 hours a week of regulators and military inspectors and the FDA. It was just not enjoyable. And the woodworking stuff was still really busy. So, I decided that was it.”

That launched Dami into a fulltime woodworking and carpentry career.

“I’ve been building everything from shaker desks and tables and slab-top bars to skateboards and high-speed racing water skis,” he listed. “All kinds of wood things that people have wanted.”

The high-speed water ski racing is a very unique niche, huge in Australia and here on Winnipesaukee, it was run up until a few years ago. Dami’s father was actively involved as a teenager as well.

“I had a couple of friends who were competitive in this race and had very fast boats,” Dami said. “We’re talking 70+ miles per hour. So the ski has to be the right combination of flexible and strong for those kinds of speeds. It has to be shaped just right.”

Dami was able to use some of his engineering background to determine, based on what they wanted the ski to do, how he should modify the design.

“In the last year that they ran this race, the first and second place finishers were both on my skis,” he said. “That was kind of cool.”

Currently, Dami has been staying creative with a boat that he has had in his possession for the last decade or so. He fell in love with the cruisers from the 1920s and 1930s.

“I love the design features of them,” he said. “It’s a very romantic design. So, I ran an ad in Wooden Boat magazine, saying I would really like to have one of those cruisers to restore. And I was looking for something that specifically was in need of a restoration but not a complete rebuild because I didn’t want to take responsibility for a boat and then not follow through.”

Obviously, they’re not making boats from the ’20s and ’30s anymore, so Dami set his sights on a cruiser from yesteryear. He received a call from a young man in his ’20s, saying that his grandfather had a boat like the one that Dami was seeking.

“I said ‘that’s cool,'” he said. “And the young man explained the boat and it was what I was looking for. This had been after my son and I had traveled all over the east coast and out to New York to look at boats that I could potentially restore.”

The 1935 Richardson Cruisabout fit the bill and Dami was ready to move onto the next step. Except the grandfather wanted $40,000 for the boat. And Dami didn’t have it.

“So about a week later, the kid called back and said his grandfather wanted me to see the boat,” Dami recalled. Dami appreciated the offer but didn’t have $40K to plunk down on a boat.

And then after another week had passed, the grandfather called and said he had a boat to unload. After a short conversation, the grandfather said he didn’t need the money but did need the boat to go to the right person.

He saw Dami’s website and knew what he was capable of doing and restoring. He wanted Steve to see his boat.

“So I bought an airline ticket and flew out there,” he said. “The boat was in Michigan on Saginaw Bay. They actually were super friendly. The guy was named Jim and his wife was called Boots. I have no idea why.”

Jim and Boots welcomed Dami to stay with them for the weekend and prepared meals and essentially put out the red carpet.

“It was a great experience just to get to know these people,” Dami said. “And to see how passionate this guy was about this boat was incredible. They were still using it every weekend. They would anchor and spend the weekend with their friends.”

The man asked Dami how much money he had; Dami said $14K to spend on this project. The man said that would work, but Dami still had to pay to get the boat back to New Hampshire. They’d settle for $10K, with $4K to transport the boat back here.

“The man said, ‘You can have it for 10 grand,'” Dami relayed. “The man wanted me to have the boat. He said, ‘The boat should belong to you.'”

So Dami made the transport arrangements and flew back to Michigan to square things away. The rest is history. The boat that is keeping him busy these days is the boat that he acquired in 2012 for $10K.

“It’s not complete yet,” he said. “But it is about to go into the water – which means the hull has been rebuilt. But I started tearing into it a little bit and the long story short is that I’m a perfectionist and ended up rebuilding the whole thing.”

It has 66 new white oak ribs, which were obtained by two standing oak trees that Dami purchased. They had to be steam-bent into place and then fastened. He reframed the entire transom and a section of the keel and plus a section of the stem. The entire cabin was completely reframed. Dami installed new fuel tanks and a new rudder system.

“New everything” he said.

“I basically redid the bottom of the boat as it had been done originally in the factory,” he explained. “That’s not what people typically do today but I wanted it to be maintainable. A lot of people will fiberglass the bottom to keep the planks from leaking and that just seals the fate of the boat at that point. You’ve got about ten years, and then it’s junk. And as this boat is 80 years old, I didn’t want to do that.”

The cosmetic work is just as hard but more finicky, Dami shared.

“But the results are exciting,” he said. “Because you’re starting to do the stuff that is representative of the era of the boat. So, you start replicating interior furniture and you start replicating trim work. It’s a ton of work. And so worth it. That’s where the character of the boat truly lies.”

For more information, go to granitecreekwoodworks.com, visit Steve Dami’s Facebook page, Granite Creek Woodworks or email skdami@metrocast.net.