Product Description

Boatbuilding is a practical handbook and boatshop assistant, designed and written to meet the needs of the builder, covering the complete process of wooden boat construction. The text covers all types of craft from flat-bottom rowboats to ocean cruisers and commercial vessels, and aids the builder in overcoming difficulties and discouraging delays resulting from the lack of easily available information on the practical side of boatbuilding. Boatbuilding gives detailed instructions, with many illustrations, on all phases of boatbuilding written out of actual boatbuilding practice and aids the builder in planning each job in its proper sequence in relation to those that follow. After a chapter discussing the choice of plans suitable for amateur work there are chapters on lofting, the backbone and setting up, flat-bottom hull construction, V-bottom hull construction, round-bottom hull construction, deck framing and building, special construction (plywood, strip planking, lap-strake, diagonal, ribband carvel, canvas), heavy construction, joiner-work, iron-work, and spar making. Each chapter is organized for easy and quick reference, and the book is completely indexed. An added feature is the inclusion of building plans for nineteen boats designed for this book and suitable for amateur building.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #107535 in Books
• Published on: 1994-04
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 624 pages

Customer Reviews

The Trusted Foundation & Classic
I bought and read this book first, then bought and read most of the boatbuilding books on the current market over the last five years. This book clearly provided a trusted foundation for many of the others. Six decades later it is still an extremely useful and trusted foundation that probably should form the core of a very serious boatbuilder's library. Although fiberglass and epoxy have transformed amateur boatbuilding, this is still the 'go to' book for many fundamentals like lofting. Get this book and supplement it with others more specifically focused on the particular type of boat you want would be excellent advice.
It is worth noting that this book contains sets of plans for a range of boats that would cost many times what the book sells for if boought separately. With this,his "American Small Sailing Craft" (lines plans and tables of offsets for traditional craft), John Gardner's books (lines and offsets for classics such as dories, peapods and whitehalls with building procedures) and "The Gougeon Brothers on Boat Construction" (for fiberglass work)one would have a championship foundation library, already stocked with a wealth of plans for solid, beautiful boats.

simply great
this one is simple. if you work or are interested in old school wood boats,,then you must have this book on your shelf.

thats it

~R~

Don't let my three star rating turn you away from this book.
Don't let my three star rating turn you away from this book. It is well written, complete in every sense of the word and well illustrated. I gave it three stars because I found other books on this subject to be more readable and easier to use as a guide and reference. This is a text book style work and it has a great place in all the books on boatbuilding. It is a fine work, but then, I must ask you, how many fine books can there be? What if I said that this was yet another fine boat building book...then what? This book makes a wonderful reference. It makes an excellent text book. It is useful if you have more than two people working on a hull (one to read aloud and the other to work). But it is not an easy, cook book on boat building. I recommend it, But there are other books out there that are better sources of information for the home builder.