Traditional Boatbuilding Made Easy

This work describes wooden boatbuilding at its most pleasurable - a traditional boat constructed with solid planking, copper clench nails, bronze fittings and three-strand rope. Written with the first-time builder in mind, this boat is ideal for those new to traditional wooden construction. Written by the designer of the boat, the book moves through the construction steps in detail, making the learning process easier for the beginner with a step-by-step approach illustrated by clear drawings.

Richard Kolin has been building boats for 25 years. He has designed and built skiffs for both plywood and plank construction.

In a clear step-by-step format, experienced boatbuilder Rich Kolin shows the reader how to build Catherine, a traditonal wooden boat, using: solid planking, copper clench nails, bronze fittings, three-strand rope, cedar planking, penetrating oils and marine paint.

Richard Kolin has been building boats for 25 years. He has designed and built skiffs for both plywood and plank construction.

This is the story of the author's apprenticeships with Japanese masters to build five unique and endangered traditional boats. It is part ethnography, part instruction, and part the personal story of a wooden boatbuilder fueled by a passion to preserve a craft tradition on the brink of extinction. Over the course of 17 trips to Japan, Douglas Brooks traveled over 30,000 miles to seek out and interview Japan's elderly master boatbuilders; he built boats with five of them, all in their seventies and eighties, between 1996 and 2010. For most of them, Brooks was their sole and last apprentice. Part I introduces significant aspects of traditional Japanese boatbuilding: design, workshop and tools, wood and materials, joinery and fastenings, propulsion, ceremonies, and the apprenticeship system. Part II details each of his five apprenticeships, concluding with a poignant chapter on Japan's sole remaining traditional shipwright. This fascinating book fills a large and long-standing gap in the literature on Japanese crafts, and will be of interest to boatbuilders, woodworkers, and all those impressed with the marvels of Japanese design and workmanship.

This book serves as a workshop handbook; giving detailed instructions on how to go about each part of a job building a boat and its proper sequence, as well as what must be looked forward to, while performing a given operation. The advantages and disadvantages of each type of construction suitable for amateurs will be described.

David C. "Bud" McIntosh was a designer, builder, and sailor of large and small wooden cruising boats for more than 50 years, and wrote about it for over 10 of those years. He made his home on New Hampshire's Piscataqua River, where he was teacher and friend to both amateur and professional boatbuilders.