Wooden Boatbuilding

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.

Reprint of the Chapelle (Search for Speed Under Sail) original published by Norton in 1941. Now printed on acid-free paper and with a new foreword by Jonathan Wilson. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

This is the combined edition of the Sydney Wooden Boat School Manuals, each of which is a guide to building a wooden boat with a different method. The manuals comprise Building a Traditional Clinker Dinghy, Strip Planking, Plywood Clinker Construction and Building the Whiting Skiff. There is also a new section on Carvel Planking. This volume distils all of Ian Smith's extensive experience of boatbuilding and boatbuilding education.

Greg Rossel grew up cruising the waters of New York Harbor and spending time in the boatyards on the south shore of Staten Island where economics (more than anything else) made wooden boats the craft of choice. He makes his home in Maine where he specializes in the construction and repair of small wooden boats, as well as writing for several publications. Greg has been an instructor at WoodenBoat School in Maine since the mid-1980's, teaching lofting, skiff building, and the "Fundamentals of Boatbuilding".

As a child, John Brooks loved to build models and sail with his grandfather. When most teenagers were at the prom, John was changing jibs in the Indian Ocean, halfway through a 35,000-mile, two-year cruise. He began building boats in commercial yards at 19, while studying boat design and building his own boats. John worked for many years honing his craftsmanship on fine yachts, small boats, custom furniture, and a harpsichord. He has been a instructor at the WoodenBoat School in Maine since the mid-1990s, teaching glued-lapstrake boatbuilding, fine interior joinery, and carving. Ruth Ann Hill grew up on the coast of Maine. A writer, boatbuilding assistant, naturalist, and graphic artist, Ruth is the author of Discovering Old Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park: An Unconventional Guide and a contributing editor for Maine Boats & Harbors magazine. John and Ruth started their business, Brooks Boats, in 1991. They design and build glued-lapstrake boats in West Brooklin, Maine-and get out to enjoy their handiwork in its proper element whenever they can.

This revised edition of a classic work covers the history, design, construction and use of traditional, wooden inshore fishing boats in the small town of Winterton, on the shore of Trinity Bay, Newfoundland. Boatbuilding lore, especially the dynamics of boat design and construction, are seen from the perspective of the boat builders themselves, and are discussed within the context of the community’s social, economic and natural environments. Lavishly illustrated with photographs, archival images, drawings, and line plans, this book is a practical guide for boatbuilding enthusiasts and a valuable resource for scholars.