"To make a boat like in good old times..."

My one, it wasn't really a dream.
A kind of curiosity, though: I am a carpenter, I am a fishermen and carpenters' son, and I work on wooden boats. In my boatyard we do maintenance on wooden boats, and often we also repair them, better, we "restore" them, as now they say, like talking about grannies' furniture.
We don't know much about boats construction theory as it was at "good ol' times", and many scholars have understood ancient techniques from our daily job.
What intrigued me was something often repeated: "it is not possible anymore to build a boat as they did in good old times". But why? I wonder to myself.
My father's uncle had left a scheme of the "gozzo" he used to fish with, and a friend had made a model out of that scheme.
My father is the last shipwright still working at Marina di Alimuri, and he remember well even what he hasn't taught me yet.
And so, with so many restored or rebuilt "gozzi" racing in lateen sail races, why could not we rebuild the "S. Maria del Lauro", 1919?
"It is not possible to build such a boat with old times techniques". I have called a photographer, and I have told him "Let's see if it's true".