Traditional wooden hulls, built plank-first
This is where the yard does what Bulukumba has always done: build a wooden hull by hand. Boat-grade construction covers working craft, charter hulls before fit-out, and traditional vessels where the value is in a sound, honest hull rather than yacht joinery. The method is the Konjo plank-first tradition — the skin of the boat is raised before the frames go in, its shape found by eye and batten, then locked with hardwood dowels rather than nails.
A boat builder shapes the vessel; a shipyard runs the yard around it — timber, slipway, sequence and delivery. Bulukumba is a regency of many village yards, and the wider community of Bulukumba’s builders each hold their own craft. Our page is about ship and boat construction organised as a yard programme, from timber selection to launch.
Timber: bitti, ironwood and teak
The hull begins in the timber stack. Bitti (Vitex cofassus) is the traditional South Sulawesi boatwood — strong, workable and rot-resistant — used for planking and framing. Ironwood (ulin) goes where hardness and ground contact matter: keel, stem, and high-wear members. Teak is used for decks, trim and bright work where dimensional stability and weathering count. We select, season and grade timber before a single plank is hung, because a hull is only as honest as the wood inside it. Read more on
how the lines are drawn before timber is cut.
The plank-first sequence
Construction follows the same ordered sequence every time: select and dry the timber; lay the keel, stem and sternpost; raise the planking shell plank by plank, edge-fastened and faired by eye; drive hardwood dowel pegs to lock the seams; fit the frames inside the finished shell; then move to deck, fit-out and rig. Caulking closes the seams; the hull is faired, sheathed or payed as specified, and readied for launch down the slipway. It is a method that rewards patience and punishes shortcuts.
What we build at boat grade
Working phinisi and cargo hulls, charter hulls delivered ready for a separate fit-out, dive and day boats, and traditional vessels built to keep a shape alive. Boat-grade does not mean lower care — it means the specification stops at a sound, faired, well-fastened wooden hull rather than yacht-level systems and joinery. When an owner wants the yacht-grade specification instead, we move the project to our
phinisi and wooden-yacht newbuild programme.
USD bands and timeline
Boat-grade wooden hulls are quoted by length, timber and finish level; a mid-size traditional hull is a lower-cost build than its yacht-grade sister of the same length. Build windows run from a few months for small craft to around a year for a large hull. As always these are planning bands in US dollars; the real number follows your specification. Our
cost and timeline page shows how the estimate is assembled.
Bulukumba Shipyard is the regency newbuild-and-refit yard brand of Juara Holding Group (established 2015), a sister brand to Komodo Luxury. The yard sits in Bulukumba Regency, South Sulawesi — Butta Panrita Lopi, the land of the Konjo and Bugis panrita lopi master shipwrights who build and restore wooden phinisi hulls, from keel-laying to haul-out.
Talk to the yard: WhatsApp +62 811-3823-875 · email sales@komodoluxury.com. Every hull is quoted after specification; price bands below are in US dollars.