Customer Reviews

Illustrated Guide to Wood Strip Canoe Building

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I have just completed Mac McCarthy's Wee Lassie using this book. The amount of detail in the book answered all my questions and some of the techniques (like reinforcing the deck with thin marine plywood) was better than using carlins and stripping the deck onto the carlins. I had no trouble building the boat. I built the boat with no staples or nails. Her stapleless building technique was straight forward and easy to do. The most difficult part was beveling the inside stems. I would not bevel the entire stem at once, but bevel as I stripped. The only part of McCarthy's book worth having are the mold patterns for the canoes. This book is the one you need to actually build the canoe.

This book has two great features. One is the fantastic color photographs showing the process of building a wood strip canoe. The second is that the author answers questions and gives details of construction that most other authors on the subject gloss over or ignore. The only negatives are the poor quality binding and the tiny size of the print.

I used this book extensively along with my regular plans book when building my Cosine Wherry. The well done illustrations and explanations helped answer many a question on "how" or "why" do do a particular building task. A highly recommended book.

This is an excellent book with many photographs and illustrations that will make it easy to understand the building process. It should help put many more "works of art" on the rivers and lakes of North America.

This book will give you the confidence to tackle your first stripwood boat project, guaranteed. Susan takes you methodically through each and every step of the process of building a stripwood canoe. She presents alternate methodologies of construction and woodworking that are tempered by knowledge and experience. I have two references at my side while building my Whitehall Pulling Boat - this book and Susan's latest work on building stripwood row boats. Other than the plans for my boat and the occasional advice of experts at The Newfound Woodworks where I got my plans, these books are all you need.

Very good color pictures, but not always helpful. Gives a lot of different approaches and methods but leaves the choice to the reader, It is obvious, and sometimes stated, that she has no experience with some of even the more basic ones.

The downside to this book is that it doesn't cover lofting really at all, so you'll need another book for that (Buehler and Schade have some excellent guides to that aspect). This, however, has a really nice, illustrated, comprehensive description of what it looks like to build a strip canoe. It covers material and tool choices in more and better detail than most other books, and, aside from working up the plans, provides and excellent understanding of the design and construction of wooden canoes. I have several boatbuilding books, but this is one of only two that I keep in my shop.

This text was easy to read and understand, partly due to the excellent photographs of work in progress. I would highly recommend it for anyone considering the building of a strip canoe.

Very good book on Strip Canoe Building, lots of insight and tips not found in other books.

This book as a lot of good information and illustrations. It would be nice if the illustrations were all in color and more detailed, though. Some good information about material sources is included.