Customer Reviews

Building Strip-Planked Boats

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Building Strip-Planked Boats by Nick Schade primarily describes methods for building beautiful boats from wood strips, fiberglass and epoxy. It updates many techniques that were described in the author's earlier book, The Strip-Built Sea Kayak. This book also provides offset dimensions and instructions to build a dinghy, a one-person canoe and a rough-water sea kayak.

This book provides an excellent overview of wood-core and fiberglass construction, and detailed information on working with wood strips, fiberglass and epoxy. Many practical tips are included, as well as suggestions for avoiding and dealing with the most common problems.

However, the book seems to be missing a few chapters. Significant information for the first-time builder is absent in this book: The kayak section contains no information on the construction of bulkheads, footbraces, rudders, retractable skegs, or outfitting the boat with deck rigging and a seat. Many best practices are missing, such as measuring epoxy with nested cups, preserving brushes and rollers by freezing, pre-taping seams for joining hull and deck, and using webbing for deck riggings.

Other best building practices receive only scant mention, such as using masking tape and a sharp blade to trim secondary layers of fiberglass. The book would also have benefited from more photographs of the finished boats.

The book would have been more appealing if it offered designs for a more general-purpose canoe and a more general-purpose kayak, as fewer people will be interested in these niche designs.

This book is a good supplement for boat-builders, but most first-time builders of a strip boat would probably learn more from the step-by-step organization of Nick Schade's first book, The Strip-Built Sea Kayak: Three Rugged, Beautiful Boats You Can Build, or Ted Moores' books Canoecraft: An Illustrated Guide to Fine Woodstrip Construction and Kayakcraft: Fine Woodstrip Kayak Construction. This is a 3-star book.

I'm currently makeing a caone out of this book. The first 150 pages tell you about cutting the wood and laying fiberglass. Things you need to do for all 3 of the boats that you can build from this book. It gives great detail on how to do stuff and the material needed. So If you want to know how to build a boat this is a 5 star book, but if your going to actually build the boat its a little diffrent story.
It gives you the form points so you can plot the points out on graph paper I did it using a program call CAD at school. I'm only 17 so my wood working knowledge is limited. But so far I'm doing great I have all the forms layed out and done. SO my only problem, is It tells you how to make a one seat less than 150LB person caonoe. What grown man weighs 150LB and u cant take any gear with you even if you are in that range. Plus the seat is the bottom of the boat. It's more of a kayak than a canoe.
Bottom line if you want to build a normal 2 person coanoe with about 500 LB max weight this is NOT your book. If you just want to build a little boat to dink around in and it says it will weigh around 15Lb and 10feet long so it will be light.
I guess I was hoping that by canoe it meant a 16 foot 2 person canoe.

There are many good points in this book but in my opinion it is trying to be too much for too wide an audience. In the process of covering multiple types of craft the "gems" are somewhat hidden. It was a good effort, but I wish in this case it had been more linear in the presentation. Don't get me wrong, I would buy it again.

If you already have some solid basic woodworking skills and have been around canoes and kayaks enough to know basically what they look like, this book contains most of the information you would need to build one, including plans and offsets for what look like a couple of beauties. It also explains "lofting" in such a way that anyone who got a D- or better in High School algebra should be able to get it. That said, this is not the best book I've found on strip-building boats, but it wouldn't be a bad choice at all.

The offsets for the boats covered are worth much more than the price if the book. Just take your time and draw the molds. Follow along with text and you'll do fine. Might also buy Nick's older book The Strip-Built Sea Kayak: Three Rugged, Beautiful Boats You Can Build Maybe even a little better for first time builder.

Interesting to read, full of good advice, not too expensive. If you're still an armchair boat-wright, like me, this book is worthwhile.

Nick's 11 more years of experience are put into this book! a lot of little tips that can help any one building small wooden boats i wish it had three more kayaks but i guess a canoe and a pram is appealing to a larger crowd... don't miss this book and if you have'nt read the first book order them both they are a must for anyone in love of building their own small wooden boats.

Good...clear and concise....author seems to know his stuff and is able to convey it in good clear form....pictures are clear and relavent to the subject at hand. I learned a lot, and I am not a complete boat building novice......

I already had "The Strip Built Sea Kayak" by Nick Schade to compare this book to. It covered all the basic techniques of strip building but added a lot of details that were lacking in the other. A great compliment to other strip building books. It would be sufficient to build a boat on it's own. I only wish there were more pictures of the finished boats.

A comprehensive guide to strip-plank boat building. Nick Schade shares his extensive experience in this book with an abundance of knowledge, many useful tips and a liberal dose of good humour needed for tackling some of the more challenging projects. The book contains plenty of dialouge and plenty of diagrams and pictures to explain each process.