This article originally was printed in the "Spring 2000" Lyman Boat Society of North America (LBSNA) "Islander" magazine.  The "Islander" has been called by WoodenBoat magazine as "One of the finest club magazines around". (J/F 1999 WB issue).  You can also join the 300+ members who receive the many other fine articles in this Lyman magazine.  Check out their enrollment form at www.lbsna.org.

The LBSNA encourages our membership to patronize the businesses both of other members and those who advertise in our magazine. We do not promote the patronage of any one business over another. The Lyman Islander has not contained any articles that could be interpreted to promote any businesses or have a commercial purpose. We have been encouraging restoration shop owners to share their Lyman restoration experience.  Our editorial policy in this matter will be similar to other magazines such as WoodenBoat and Classic Boating in that these articles are primarily to provide a technical service to our members with a benefit to those providing the information as being recognized as potential sources of service. The above policy noted, there is no doubt that the most unique business of special interest to Lyman owners and therefore the first business that should be profiled is "Koroknay’s Marine Woodworking" of Lexington, Ohio.

A Visit with Tom Koroknay
by Alan Briggs

Last spring, Jerry and I journeyed through the rolling farmland of north central Ohio to the picturesque small town of Lexington, Ohio, the home of Tom Koroknay. Tom, as many of our members are aware, also goes by the name of  "Doctor Lyman." His business, Koroknay’s Marine Woodworking, as he states on his Web page, is "The Lyman Wood Boat Factory–we have all of the original fixtures and patterns to supply you with the replacement parts to make your Lyman ‘just like new.’"

As anyone who has ever been involved with boat restoration or building can attest, the continuously varying and complex curves, bevels and contours of a boat hull do not lend themselves to much use of power tools. Unlike building a dining room table, one cannot just set the wood stock for the stem against the table saw rip fence and run it through. Because the bevel angle of the stem is continuously changing and because of the complex shape of the notch in the stem, known as the rabbet, where the ends of the hull planks lie, the only option for most boat restorers to create this feature is hours of time-consuming chisel work.

This is not the way, however, that Tom Koroknay repairs Lyman boats. We were going to have the chance to visit with the man whose possession of the factory jigs to allow fast and accurate power tool production of complex parts make him renowned among Lyman boat owners. Tom welcomed us into his large and well-organized shop. While he spent a few minutes on the phone with a customer, I looked around his shop (photo 1).

The previous day, Jerry and I had been at the actual Lyman factory in Sandusky, Ohio. We may have been a bit naive in believing that we would have what amounted to a near-religious experience in seeing the actual Lyman factory in Sandusky. However, after driving all the way from New York State, what greeted our eyes was nothing more than gutted-out and down-in-the-mouth buildings that now were nothing more than storage sheds for modern boats. But looking around Tom’s shop was something akin to the experience that a Muslim faithful feels on his first visit to the holiest of Moslem shrines, the sacred Kaaba in Mecca.

Besides many wall shelves stuffed with Petit and Epiphanes varnishes and paints, along with other shelves chock-full of many cans of specially formulated Lyman filler stains and Lyman Sand Tan Bilge paints, there were boxes and bins filled with miscellaneous small Lyman parts and bronze fasteners. Covering the walls in every nook and cranny were the larger Lyman components, such as steering wheels, stern lights, name plates and advertising materials. A scan across the three bays of Tom’s shop revealed several Lyman boats in various states of repair. However, mixed in with large stationary power tools and various setup tables were what made us know that we were indeed at the Lyman factory. At the far end of the ship was rack after rack piled to rafters of what appeared to be numerous heavy wooden patterns and jigs (photo 2).

Tom got off the phone and exchanged a few wisecracks about not believing we could find our way down to his house all the way from New York. He informed us that he had few operations he was going to perform that day that we could help him with. Tom was going to machine and steam bend the oak rub rails for a late ‘50s 23-footer. We were game to try.

This rub rail is a gnarled piece of oak that mates to the sinuously twisting shape of the sheer, or upper, plank of the hull. Because of the substantial outward hull flare angle up forward varying to an inward sloping tumble-home angle at the transom, many amateur boat restorers look on fabrication of this cantankerous piece of oak with dread. How did Lyman handle this technical problem? They didn’t make this part with a lot of chiseling. As can be seen in the next series of photos, Lyman built a box with angled beds for the rub rail stock to be supported on for a trip through the thickness planer. By this means, squared up oak stock was just laid in the box and after a pass through the thickness planer resulted in a piece with the correct smoothly varying angle along the entire length of the after end of the rub rail (photo 3).

Tom then took these pieces of oak to their next destination, the steam box. After soaking the oak pieces in the steam box for 45 minutes or so, we were going to put them in another factory jig that mimicked the shape of a 23-foot Lyman hull and allowed the proper curve and twist of the forward section. While we were waiting for the oak to steam, Tom took a few minutes to tell us his story and association with Lyman’s history.

Although the mostly maple jigs that Tom was using that day were solid-looking, he informed us that when he acquired them from the new owners of the Lyman boat factory in 1988, many of them had been thrown outside to rot in the parking lot mud puddles. The new owners of the Lyman boat factory were strictly interested in fiberglass boat production and saw no value to these jigs that were just taking up valuable shop space. Many of these complex jigs had no clear purpose and certainly no label or user instructions. Unlike a new Lyman employee of the 1960s, Tom had to spend much time and effort both refurbishing and learning the use of these jigs without any on-the-job training. Where he sometimes was missing parts to jigs, he had to use his own on-the-spot ingenuity to create a replacement.

The next photo (photo 4) shows Tom taking the steamed rub rail stock to a different type of box jig(note the quick-acting clamps) for the forward section of the rub rail. This jig puts the correct curvature and twist into the rub rails. Use of the special jig with the quick-acting clamps is preferable to bending the hull itself because it can be done off the manufacturing line and because the quick-acting clamps allow final setting of the hot oak stock before it cools too much.

 Tom next demonstrated use of the Lyman two-headed shaper paired with a Lyman Factory stem jig (photo 5). As either stem or knee stock and the appropriate jig face are passed over the cutter with its pilot bearing, with the correct profile and bevel is cut in the stem stock. The two heads on the shaper turn in opposite rotating directions from each other and both of them are necessary at different locations of the stems or knees to avoid grain tear out.

Tom also demonstrated some of the Lyman factory jigs necessary to produce planking. Tom uses only planking with 8:1 factory scarf joints–no butt blocks here! He creates them on a special shaper that uses a 10' saw blade on the spindle (see photo 6). The fixture on the angled table, riding in the slot, is a box jig into which planking stock can be clamped for a ride through the saw blade. Unlike Lyman, who used "hot resin glue," which was probably resorcinol, Tom clamps and glues his planking stock with epoxy. Tom reports no in-service failures with epoxy and believes it is the way to go. Tom also demonstrated the Lyman fixture that is used to create the tapered bevels, also known as gains, at the ends of the planks (see photo 7).

These gains allow the planks to lie flush against the transom and stem so that the planks transition out to a smooth line and don’t continue the clapboard effect of lapstrake planks at the plank ends. Tom uses a special Lyman "router" that rides in tracks so that the proper gain angle and run-out taper is cut. This router is really more like an electric plane with horizontal shaft instead of the vertical shaft of a conventional router that most of us are familiar with.

Tom uses another specialty tool, an electric plane modified with "skis" to cut the correct bevel angles on a new transom for a 15' outboard model (photo 8). The skis ride on the outside edges of a transom sandwich jig and quickly produce exactly the correct bevel angle around the entire perimeter of any model transom. A large percentage of the transoms Tom has reproduced have been based just on the customers’ reporting of the hull number. After producing these transoms, Tom has shipped them via motor freight all over the country for a perfect fit sight unseen of the hull.

Tom also took us through some of this other buildings. He has the one Lyman factory building jig left in existence. It happens to be of the popular 26' hull, for the Cruisette, Sleeper or Offshore models (see photo 9). These jigs allowed the ribs and planking to be quickly clamped to the hulls with a clamping station for every single rib! Tom informed us that Lyman was storing the other hull jigs in various storage locations around Sandusky. After many years of non-use and escalating storage charges, every building jig for every other Lyman model was burned, as well as the jigs left at the Sandusky plant.

This is one bonfire that would have made many of us cry. Tom has many rare Lyman models in his collection, including this 1941 16-foot inboard model (photo 10). We also saw Tom’s own 26-foot hardtop model that he has customized with a teak cockpit sole and elegant frame and panel mahogany cabinetry. As can be seen from the transom photo of Tom’s personal boat, "Lucky Lyman Too," his varnishing and finishing is second to none (photo 11).

After dinner of beer and pizza at the local pub, Tom’s close friend Tom deLombarde, webmaster for both Tom’s web site and also our LBSNA Web site, joined us. Tom Koroknay showed us some of his Lyman archival collection. Tom truly has the factory records from 1929 to the early 1980s covering the heyday of both wood and fiberglass production. If you want to document the original shipment date and location of your hull, Tom is the man to contact. As he advertises on his web site, http://www.lymanboat.com/, he has "decorative purposes" blue line profile prints available for many hulls. Last year, Tom has also started a Lyman historical web site at http://www.clinkerbuilt.com/ where he includes much archival information on some of the most popular models, as well as rare Lyman factory and family photos.

If you want to purchase a catalog or factory photo of your boat, he is the man to see. At the end of our visit, Tom gave a gift of some historic Lyman catalogs and drawings to the LBSNA to assist members in historical research.

Our many hours of driving from New York to Ohio were made worthwhile singularly from our visit to Tom Koroknay’s shop. Tom can supply any wooden part via mail order and also stocks many hard-to-find parts for your difficult Lyman restoration. We wish him the best of luck in his future business and hope to have a future partnering with him to take advantage of his unique knowledge of Lyman history and construction.