OQUOSSOC – Craftsman Maurice Belanger will participate in the 66th National Folk Festival in Bangor Friday night through Sunday afternoon, Aug. 27- 29.

The Oquossoc resident restores 17-foot cedar and oak Rangeley boats. He’ll tell visitors about the construction of these boats in the Maine Folk Arts section of the Folk Festival. For example, he says it takes two people two and a half days to “rib” a Rangeley boat, that is, to steam and install the cedar ribs.

Folklorist Peggy Yocom of the Rangeley Lakes Region Logging Museum and of George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., will work with him at the festival. She has arranged for a new book by Rangeley resident Harland “Spike” Kidder to be sold at the festival. The book, “A Good Life in the Rangeley Lakes Area: A Good Life Hunting, Trapping, and Fishing,” includes a history of the Rangeley boat.

Born in Caribou in 1937 and raised in Bingham, Belanger grew up loving the outdoors. A frequent visitor to logging camps as he trapped for beaver, he also worked on the Stoney Brook Pond river drive in 1954 and on the Wyman Lake-Kennebec River drives from 1954 to 1956.

With his wife, Louise, he moved to the Rangeley area in 1962 as a forestry patrolman for the Forest Service. Later, the couple managed a set of private camps, where he guided with Rangeley boats.

When he became superintendent of the Oquossoc Angling Association in 1989, he put his carpentry skills to work. Over the years, he’s restored at least 30 Rangeley boats and repaired countless others. He also learned from men who restored Rangeley boats before him, such as Archer “Junior” Poor.

The oldest folk festival in the United States, the National Folk Festival stays in one city for three years and then moves to another so it can bring the best in traditional music and the arts to people throughout the country. This is its last year along the Penobscot River in Bangor. Next year, when the National Folk Festival heads south to Richmond, Va., the people of Bangor plan to hold a festival of their own, the American Folk Festival.

For more information, including the daily schedule of events, people can visit www. nationalfolkfestival.com.