Customer Reviews

Building The Six-Hour Canoe

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4 star:		(3)
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The tiltle can be very deceiving. At least it was for me. Building the 6 hour canoe was very easy using the plans and directions provided by the book. I do not have allot of experience working with wood and this book made the whole experience pleasurable. The whole project took me 4 weekends to complete. I imagine that with the right equipment all the components of the boat could be cut out and prepared for assembly within 6 hours. The epoxy recommended requires a cure time of 6 hours so be prepared for the project to last longer than expected. The pictures help explain the directions. There are a few errors in the pictures but by following the directions you can't go wrong. Do not forget the limber holes in the frame. the plans show the location but the directions do not cover them. The hardest part was finding the 16 foot 1x2s required. I ended up having to rip them from a 2x6. Other than that, it was fun and I now want to try another style of boat. My daughter and I are looking forward to having fun with this canoe.

Although the six hours refers to someone with experience and possessing all the tools and wood, the design is perfect for people (me, for example) with no woodworking experience. Because I had little experience, I had to refer to Tom Hill's extraordinary Ultralight Boatbuilding, which though written for a skilled woodworker includes important details left out of Six-Hour. There are only a few things I would want to change to Six-Hour:
There are two lists of materials, one on p. 11, one on p. 58. They do not match. The one on 11 has a frame bottom, but this is not in 58, and 58 does not list the keel. They mention a "full sized pattern" for the gussets on p. 18, but no such pattern exists. They also might as well include the butt block procedure for two 4x8 pieces of plywood in the main part of the book because most places on the planet do not have 4x16 pieces of marine grade plywood. Also, readers should work hard to find a source of cheap bronze screws before they start (the project requires about 120 of them--not the 50 given in the text--and they are expensive!) It would also have been nice if they had photographs showning the canoe at main stages in the process. The above minor points did not detract from the 30 hours or so of pure enjoyment I had in using this book to build a canoe. I hope the authors come out with the sailboat version they promise.

I have taken a class a Buffalo State College with John Montague, the author. In the class I built the weekend skiff, a row boat/sail boat. I have also built the 6-hour canoe with high school age kids in the Adirondack Mountains at a summer camp. It took a group of 6 kids to build 2 canoes and approximately 4 days working about 4 hours per day, this includes painting the canoe which is not part of the 6 hours of building the canoe. The directions are easy to follow and the cost is very inexpensive. The canoes have lasted 2 summers so far and look to withstand many more. They are made of marine grade plywood. Have fun building one yourself.

My friend's dad just did this at the Stoney Creek Wooden Boat Shop in the Rochester, Michigan area with a group of kids as part a youth program. It's a simple and rewarding boat to build and it really can be done rather quickly. It definitely took longer than 6 hours with a group of unexperienced kids, but the project was easily finished over a few weekends. Highly recommended. Have fun building one yourself or with kids in your neighborhood! If you have the slightest interest in building boats, this is a great place to start.

I built the described canoe as soon as I got the book. It was my first canoe building project and I found it straight forward and simple. The canoe is ideal for one adult or one adult and a child. I enjoy it with my 5 year old son who likes to paddle it alone on calm water. It was a great father & son project.

Well written booklet that will cause you to clear space and buy plywood. Easily understandable for the beginner and enough information for an expert to appreciate. The section on community/educational boatbuilding is an inspiration.

Six hours a day for three or four days is more true to being realistic!
The end result is worth the effort. The boat is nice to use.

This is a great little book about building a great little boat. It is a little out of date though. If I were to build the boat today following the plans in this book, I would eliminate the chine logs and instead use the "stitch and sew" method of construction. Actually I would use duct tape to hold the pieces of plywood together and use resin (epoxy or polyester) and glass tape to fasten it all together. Then remove the duct tape and remove rough edges.Also I might call it a pirogue instead of a canoe.

We have made these as part of youth programmes in Western Australia. They take us about 30 hours to build with groups of 4 to 5 working on them. These people have never made anything before so progress is slower than you would first think. They are a great project, we use cheap ply and paint them well seems to work fine. The group gets a great deal for the building process. I keep meaning to build one for myself, perhaps this time round I will

I built this boat and it as sevred me well and it well sevre you will also.It's easy to build.