Product Description

Ultralight canoes and small boats are things of beauty, their apparent delicacy concealing great strength. They are lapstrake-constructed from marine plywood planks, each plank overlapping the one below it in a gracefully curved hull. Epoxy glue along the laps gives the hull structural reinforcement, minimizing the need for framing and permitting an amazingly light structure. Round-bilged and elegant, they are built over jigs, but the method is straightforward and not time consuming. You can build a boat that will give you fun and satisfaction, one you can be proud of, in a winter of leisurely weekends. No fancy tools are needed, and care and patience will make up whatever you lack in woodworking skills.

All the information you need is here. Tom Hill, the chief proponent of ultralight boatbuilding and its leading practitioner, describes the method from start to finish using a skiff and canoe as examples. In the appendix is a gallery of ultralight designs, all but one of which you can build without lofting. If you want more flexibility, however, you can adapt almost any lapstrake small-boat design, traditional or modern, to the ultralight method. With some lofting (directions for which are given) you may then build a wide range of boats whose offsets are available. And you may adjust planking thickness and scantlings to give your boat extremely light weight with normal strength, or moderate weight with great strength.

Particularly if you lack an extensively equipped workshop and professional skills, Ultralight Boatbuilding will unlock exciting possibilities you considered out of reach.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #102641 in Books
• Published on: 1987-11-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 134 pages

Review
``A marvelous book which has broken fresh ground on quality, low-cost construction of traditional hull forms. By all means, don't pass up this book.'' (The Ash Breeze )

``Crammed full of work-saving techniques. . .The boatbuilding skills presented are all tried and true, but seldom presented this clearly.'' (WoodenBoat )

About the Author
Tom Hill lives in Huntington, in the Green Mountains of Vermont, where he has been building boats and houses since 1972. He reckons he has built more than a hundred boats in that time, and has repaired hundreds more--everything from canoes and rowboats to 60-foot power yachts. Although he has worked with all types of wood construction as well as fiberglass, he has used glued plywood plank construction almost exclusively since being introduced to the method in 1980. Tom has taught boatbuilding classes since 1981 at The WoodenBoat School (Brooklin, Maine), The Brookfield Craft Center (Brookfield, Connecticut), the Shelburne Craft School (Shelburne, Vermont), and The Appalachian Center for the Crafts (Smithville, Tennessee). The boating he likes best is gunkholing--poking along interesting shores and exploring coves, estuaries, and inland waterways in canoes, kayaks, and small sailboats--but he appreciates ocean cruising as well, and once sailed his 28-foot sloop from Lake Champlain to the Bahamas and back while living aboard her for a year.

Customer Reviews

Clear and instructive!
Thomas Hill hit the nail on the head with this book.

Having never built a boat before but thinking about it I picked up this book. I was not disappointed. It does not show the patterns required etc. but what it does give are clearly explained methods for build ultralight boat out of plywood and epoxy, which can be transferred to building other small vessels. The text is very clear but some of the photos leave a bit to be desired.

The book walks the reader through the steps needed to build a canoe and a flat-bottomed skiff and therefore covering most of the steps needed for most ultralight boats. This book was very clear, even for someone like me who has minimal woodworking skills (Experience = 6months of playing) but who dreams of building their own boat.

The appendix are also very helpful in pointing out sources of patterns but all address for other materials are in the US. However, products are named throughout the book.

One final point, if you are looking for detail in how to loft a boat then look at Vaitses book on lofting. This book only gives a quick overview on the subject.

A good overview of one style of small boat construction.
This is a good book for daydreamers or for someone looking to get started in building a small boat. The book describes construction techniques for a canoe and a small skiff. The methods described can be applied to other designs, but the information provided is not enough to actually construct either example boat.

Plans for the example boats (or for other designs) can be purchased separately.

Makes the leap from sofa to workshop!
Hill takes a no-nonsense approach in both his boat building and book writing - this book is squarely aimed at getting you off the sofa and into the workshop with a minimum of fuss.

While relatively short at 111 pages (excl. appendices) the book is very much to the point and gives an excellent overview of the whole glued plywood lapstrake boat building process; from equipping your workshop to lofting the lines, building a jig, scarfing plywood and then the various stages of building the boat and planking it. There's even a short chapter on finishing!

All you need to start building your first wooden boat is this book, an empty single-car garage, some basic hand tools, a set of construction plans for your boat and the contact details of a marine plywood supplier!