Customer Reviews

How to Build Glued-Lapstrake Wooden Boats

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a great book for any boatbuilder, especially the home builder like I am. I have built 3 lapstrake boats, 2 hard chine boats and 1 cedar strip and I like glued lapstrake the best. John's book has a great amount of detail. I wish I had this book years ago. I really like his method of planking without clamps. He screws down battens instead. The building frame and mold set up allow you to get underneath to scrape excess epoxy before it cures. He focuses on minimizing sanding after the planking is all done. Sanding can easily take as long as building if you do a sloppy job. Many shopmade jigs and neat ideas are shown like such as: angle gauge, gain-o-matic, circular saw batten guide when ripping strakes, and many others. I was very interested in the section on finishing. I saw one of John's boats in person at a Mystic seaport small craft event and I thought for sure the finish was sprayed. It was not. It was beautiful. John's craftsmanship is first rate and probably the best I have seen in glued lapstrake boats. His attention to detail carries over into his writing. Ruth Ann Hill deserves a lot of credit too for the high quality boats and this book. Not many people can do both building and writing well, but they pull it off. I hope he comes out with more boat plans in the future.

I am someone who has to think twice on which is the business end of a hammer, but after reading this book I am nearly to a point of conversion on wanting a new hobby. In a delightful, light, humorous tone, Brooks and Hill give step-by-step instructions on how to build a glued-lapstrake wooden boat. The book has a drawing or a photograph on practically every one of its 270 pages. Useful drawings and graphics and notes for how to do hundreds of steps pop up every other page. Clever ways to do things, jigs you can build, tools you can construct yourself, serendipitous discoveries, and hints and tricks and lessons learned from their own mistakes appear in jaw-dropping detail throughout the book, shared in a reassuring "don't worry, if we can do it, so can you!" tone. Brooks and Hill obviously have great senses of humor and untold amounts of patience and resourcefulness which they transmit to the reader, page after page, from the beginning of the project to the bitter end of painting, varnishing, installing hardware, and even launching.

Brooks and Hill seem to have anticipated every spot in the process where a builder might encounter a pesky problem or where goofups are common. They are there ahead of time to warn of the potential problem, and they're there after the fact with a fix-up if the goofup occurs anyway. This advice has to be worth its weight in gold, considering the number of complicated steps involved.

I am not a religious person, but just knowing that there is a paragraph in this biblical work on what I can do if my keelson warps or how I can fix it if my spiling pattern for the sheerstrake curves out into free space gives me spiritual reassurance. Read it yourself and see if you don't feel just a little better about the state of the world -- even if you never build a boat!

Although I enjoy reading John Gardner's books the most, when it comes time to build this is the book I'll have on my workbench. It's packed with more info than any other book I've seen and answers all those nagging questions. It's by far the best Bible on boat building. The only part about his boat building technique I question is the use of screws, battens, and small blocks of wood to replace clamps. Guess I'll have to try it both ways to be convinced it's easier. Hat's off to you John. Good work.

Neil

I am currently building a Keith Callaghan designed Hazardous 170 Merlin Rocket racing sailing dinghy in Italy and I have purchased various books including those by The Gougeon Brothers, Ian Oughtred, John Leathern, Greg Rossel and others all of which are very good. However, I have never built a boat before and I needed a text which provided information from the ground up.
This book is first class. The authors provide a step by step approach to every single minute aspect of the building process. There are many innovative ideas and the book is generally written with great clarity. You will need a working knowledge of marine and woodworking terminology and you will probably spend ten or twenty minutes reading, rereading and reflecting on the techniques and steps involved in many sections. But the sheer beauty of the book is that it is all there so we can all get cracking.
Many thanks to the authors for writing such an excellent book and for giving all of us the opportunity to embark on the beautiful craft of glued clinker (lapstrake) wooden boatbuilding.

Some year ago, I retired from a business career and with no manual skills. Almost immediately I traveled to the WoodenBoat School in Maine to take several classes, where John Brooks was (and I hope still is) an instructor. I made my first "breasthook", which involves cutting very accurate angles into a single piece of wood, and John then gave it the "flashlight test". If any light showed between the piece and the sheer plank it was supposed to fit perfectly against ... fail! Yep, I failed. John is a perfectionist, which I imagine most master boat builders have to be..and his own work shows it. One day, just outside of the WoodenBoat shop, I spied the most beautiful little rowing and sailing dinghy I had ever seen, sitting on the lawn, 12 feet in length she was, if I remember correctly. The worksmanship was just amazing. So, the builder just had to be John Brooks! And, of course, it was. So, I took 40 or 50 photos of it, from every imaginable angle. I then purchased the plans for that beauty, which John has named the "Ellen", along with a copy of his "How To Build Glued Lapstrake Boats", which describes the easy to follow step-by-step approach to building the Ellen. I then had just enough experience and information to head home and be "dangerous". I would finally build my first boat. Working on it part time, I completed a 16 foot version of Ellen. Like reading a good novel, I was a little sad when she was finished, but oh so proud of the results. I think even John would give me a thumbs-up on how she turned out, all the way down to the old fashioned wooden mast hoops, and how she sails, with her proud gaff rigged sail, which my wife machined sewed from a kit we found on the Internet. Everywhere we now go to sail, people crowd around with eyes wide and compliment my (John's) beautiful boat. "How To Build Glued Lapstrake Boats" was my easy to follow guide. I highly recommend this book to someone new to boat building who wants a true beauty for his or her first boat, along with the experience of learning the essentials of a time honored trade. Thanks, John, for the book and for the experience ... and thanks to you too, Ruth Ann Hill, for your beautiful photography and illustrations.

I have bought and read every book on the market about epoxy and wood boatbuilding in preparation for building my own gaff rigged crusing boat. This volume is the best of the bunch -- and it has some excellent company -- but it is heads above the others. I am now rereading it because I am sure I will absorb more knowledge that I will need as the epoxy begins to set up.

If you are new to building glued lapstrake (clinker style) boats, this is an excellent book for starters. It has very comprehensive chapters written in practical language for the new boat builder covering everything from plans to finishing. The book is logically laid out and each chapter covers a specific activity of a boat's build. There is also good coverage of the tools, timbers and glues required for boat building. Although written primarily for the North American market, there is no problem with the book for those outside North America, except perhaps the use of the imperial measurement system instead of metric. It could usefully have had both measurement systems to save the reader doing all the calculations. There are dozens of black and white photos throughout the book and these support the text well, although some are a bit dark or too distant to really see any detail. If you were building the John Brooks design 'Ellen', then this book would be a great addition to the plans. Having said that, it would still be an excellent reference for building any design of lapstrake boat. As the authors stress, this is a book for use in the workshop rather than a book to sit in your library, and I entirely agree. Excellent value for money overall.

I concur with other reviewers as to the generosity of the authors. There are so many valuable tips in this book. I have just started my boat and have already realized some time-savings. I am very pleased with this book.

I've read a few books about boatbuilding, and my two favorites are Tom Hill's Ultralight Boatbuilding, and now this one. The authors have really thought out the process of building lapstrake boats, and translated that knowledge into an easy-to-understand format.

I would include this book on a short-list of boatbuilding "must reads". From the text to the photos to the side-bar areas, you come away with a very good understanding of the process.

I highly recommend this to anyone thinking about building their own boat.

The ability to design and build beautiful boats is one thing. The ability to convey an ostensibly complex process with clearly organized, well-written text is another. John and Ruth bring these abilities together to produce one of the best boat-building books that I have come across so far.

I bought How to Build Glued-Lapstrake Boats because I am currently building John's 12-foot sailing/rowing boat Ellen, but this book is more than a manual for building one of John's designs. If you are considering glued-lapstrake construction, it is indispensible. Not only is every stage of the process covered in depth, but each chapter is full of woodworking tips, useful jigs, and information on what to do when mistakes are made. In past boat projects I have run into problems that I did not expect. To see these inevitable mishaps addressed with very clear instruction is refreshing and is something that I have not found in other books. John's advice provides elegant, common-sense solutions to a lot of little issues that I have struggled with in the past.

The highlights: very clear writing style, comprehensive description of the building process based on years of experience, great perspective on woodworking, tools, how to build efficiently, plus mistakes and how to handle them.

The low points: some of the black and white images make it hard to see as much detail as I would like. In fairness, to include higher resolution color images in a book like this would probably not be cost effective.

The plans that I received for Ellen are the most accurate and complete plans that I have worked from so far. It is not surprising that the book shares this same detail-oriented, accurate, and comprehensive style that John and Ruth have aspired to. I highly recommend it.