(gentle music) - I got my first boat job when I was 19.

It was on a passenger vessel on the canal, and I've been with canals working on tugs for 22 years now.

I think fenders have been around for as long as boats have.

Anytime a vessel comes up alongside another vessel or up alongside a dock, there needs to be some sort of cushion there to protect the dock and the boat.

There are a lot of different materials for fenders.

Rubber is often used nowadays on big ships and tugboats, but we like to still do it the way that it was done back when our tugs were built.

We still operate a couple of tugs within the system that are from the 1930s.

We have the Tug Syracuse, the Tug Roosevelt, Those vessels have the traditional fenders, as opposed to the tires that some of our newer boats have.

They're quite often made of repurposed rope that, you know, if it's no longer needed, why throw it in a landfill when we can put it back to use?

The core on these quite often is just old rope that's been bunched up and then woven around.

I like to use rubber.

This is gate seal off a lock.

There are a lot of different ways to do it.

I've done, I'm sure, more than a hundred of these, and I've sort of fallen into a way of doing it that works for me.

I think it's pretty simple and it goes quickly.

(lively music) This method of building a fender is very easy.

It's all one piece.

It's not knots, it's a series of hitches.

So I go in and pull it out, and then I go to the next one, tuck it in, pull it out, and I just go around and around and around until I get to the bottom, and then I'll skip, and I'll start doing a tuck every other and then every third.

And I don't know if that makes sense, but it eventually comes to a nice rounded bottom, and it's very simple.

People have asked me if I would make a set of them for their boats, but I always say, "No, but I'm happy to show you how you can do it.

It's very easy to do."

So let me just work on this.

This is a...

I don't always make them this tight, but I didn't want a lot of the black showing through.

So this is a fid.

They are sometimes metal and sometimes wood.

It's just a way to open up and make a space for the next tuck of the half hitch.

And these are homemade.

It's very close to macrame.

(lively music) Everybody used to do it.

I don't think we have that many people anymore.

A lot of people have retired or moved on and taken their knowledge with them.

We don't really have a need for it much anymore with only three vessels still using these.

I would love it if we would teach some of the newer people coming in how to do this.

They're very historic, traditional.

Aesthetically, it's the perfect thing for an old tugboat.

It would probably look silly on a modern day tugboat, but for the tugs that we have that were built in the '30s, it's the right thing to do.