SUMMARY
Indonesia is an archipelago, within the islands themselves there are many rivers. To connect between one island or location to another, our ancestors have used wooden boats long ago. For income earning, the fishermen use also this wooden ship. Therefore, it is not surprising that since ancient times Indonesian people have been very familiar with what wooden boats are, including how to make these wooden ships and also how to choose wood suitable for the wooden ship. They commonly choose the wood available in their surrounding area. Batulicin is an area located on the southeastern coast of South Kalimantan province where many people make wooden boats such as fishing boats and cargo or passenger ships. The objective of this study was to describe how the Batulicin’s community made a curvature of the components of wooden vessels as well as informing the types of wood used for making wooden vessels. The result of this study showed that the wood for ship components were ulin, halaban and bungur. Although the selection of wood species was traditionally carried out, however these wood are still meet with the SNI standards requrenment as well as the rules of Indonesian Wooden Ship Construction. The curved components of the shipbuilding were found on the boat skin, boat ribs, boat ‘senta’ and on the propellers holder. The curvature techniques used by the community include by heating the wood and bending it, by force through dragging using a pulley and by utilizing the natural curvature of curved plant parts such as branches, roots or natural bent wooden stems. Although the wood bending technique done traditionally without pre-treatment, the wood from the curvature did not crack or break. In developing wood bending techniques for the community, it is recommended to find a bending technique with a preliminary treatment that is relatively inexpensive and easy to apply by the community.