If the boat-building bug has bitten you hard enough that you've already gotten more than a few "how-to-build the Pineapple Snipe on your lunch break in one week for spare change" tomes under your belt, and progressed into the realm of plans by Gardiner, the practical wisdom of Dynamite Payson, and maybe (gasp!) even taken a saw to some wood, then this book will be a pleasant companion on an end table by the fireside. One that you can dip into at random from time to time, soaking up the esoteric as well as the more mundane gleanings of Culler's lifetime spent messing about with boats. Don't expect to learn HOW to build a boat from this book, and you won't be disappointed. Instead, enjoy how Culler shares with you how to approach building boats you can use, how building meshes into a boat's usability, maintability, and enjoyability. Culler never goes "zen" on the reader, nor waxes on about how materials and methods "back in the day" were perfecto and today's not worth squat. Instead, his writing lets the discipline and insight of a Master shine through as an extension of the quietly enthusiastic sharing and tutoring he gave so freely of in his lifetime, and pours out a cornucopia of boat builder's lore of rare quality which helps one grasp the WHY of older techniques (both high-end and mass-market) and how to fit newer materials and constraints on construction into context with what went before. I wish I could rate this book higher than three stars, as I really like it (for what it is). But the muddy photos, small-sized drawings, lack of annotations, and failure to include plans and/or photos illustrating each of the boat types and construction techniques discussed in the text make a higher rating impossible. Hopefully somebody will address all of the discrepancies in a revised edition, and print it on quality paper. Meanwhile, if you're ready for it, and can accept this book on its own terms, then by all means buy it: you won't be disappointed.
