Customer Reviews

Featherweight Boatbuilding

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

 

 

Mac takes you through the process of building your own little canoe. His practicle, common sense approach to building inspires confidence in the novice builder. The sections on his own paddling experiences are great motivation to get started. I built my Wee Lassie II straight from the book, with great results...and now I'm enjoying my own paddling experiences!

This book is both inspirational and practical. The plans and procedures are as detailed as you would like, and the methods described can be applied to other projects as well. The author's personality really comes through. After reading this book, I really want to build this canoe. The only question is how do I explain to my wife why I am building a one-seater?

If you are thinking about making a strip canoe this is a great book to have. But I don't think it is the only one you'll need to embark on the project. It has some useful tips you may not find elsewhere and gives another perspective on how-to-do-it; but it is a slightly featherweight book padded with some extraneous diversions into the joys of canoeing the rivers of Florida, Adirondaks, etc. It attempts to be a complete guide and includes information on paddle making and sailing rigs, as well as plans. It is worth getting but, if you're inexperienced in the techniques, be prepared to add another book, eg. "Canoecraft" by Ted Moores, for the full picture.

The book is very informative on the matter of strip building. The Wee-Lassie canoe is one of the projects on my "to do" list. The best thing is that you can build your canoe straight from the book without needing to order any plans.

I would, with out hesitation, recommend this book. Mac does a very good job of relating all the information needed to build this head-turning canoe. Although I built this canoe in just five weeks, Mac provides encouragement and inspiration along the way to keep your motivation high to the end. I built the 12 foot Wee Lassie and have been in that canoe many, many times in the past two years (and caught many fish in her, too!)

The only "hard" part of the process was ripping, beading and coving the strips. The actual boatbuilding part was a pleasure. Build one and you'll be yearning to build another... I am!

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Along with the author's heartfelt love for canoeing, this book contains kernels of experience and information not found in any other book on strip-built craft. His detail on wood selection and milling, and stripping methods are worth five times the price of the book. I am using this book as my guide for building larger boats using his methods. Buy it.

Building a cedar strip canoe involves at great deal of work, but this books lays out the process step by step with decent pictures too. The author always tries to keep it simple. The book is a good shop manual and I used it to build a 11'6" cedar strip canoe. The author does talk about making inside stems but has now gone to the "no stem" method where the inside in filled in later with and epoxy fillet. I did this and it made much more work for me because my strips did not line up real tight at the stem and the inside fillet looked awful. Adding cedar wood flour made it look like poop. I scraped out and started over with the white silica filler. You get the idea. Cloudy white epoxy compared to a nice varnished wood interior stem made me wish I had done a wood stem to begin with. You see it all the time when you are paddling so it should be nice. I will paint it a copper color or something to make it look better. I would never do the epoxy fillet stem again, period. John Michne details a great method for wood stem making, stem bending with a heat gun and stem beveling with a sanding stick on his website michneboat.com. The definitive book on cedar strip canoe building is Ted Moore's Canoecraft. Michne's book on building the Adirondack Guideboat is also excellent and stresses high quality methods throughout. This is a good book too because it is not a whole lot of words or pages and lots of pictures. It also sold me on the benefits of a small canoe for backwater exploring. Nice transitions chapters on his canoeing experiences.

This book is great to get you excited about building a canoe. The basics are all there but there are details that are missing that would be helpful. It is definitely worth having in your library before you start your first canoe.

My Husband and 16 year old son are making the Wee Lassie Canoes. They have found that this book had more to offer then the others. Web sites to purchase materials was a plus. They hope to finish before next spring 2009 so they will be ready for the Ouachita River. Great father son activity.
BK

I read this book cover-to-cover in one night. It is very detailed, and I like the way Mac weaves in his stories of various boating trips that he's been on. I am in the process of finishing a wood strip kayak, and can't wait to start on a Wee Lassie.