Hi Cosmo, welcome to the forum.
Robson Green covered the revival of traditional boat building at Amble in the TV series 'Tales from Northumberland' (second series actually, 'More Tales from Northumberland') episode 5, '
Industrial Heritage'. I went to youtube to get the link for the eposode, but Sods Law being what it is, lots of episodes on there but not the Amble boat building one..
Anyway, if you can find that episode it might give you some ideas. I cannot recall who the chap was working on the boat building project shown in the episode, but he would be able to answer all your questions I'm sure.