| Rating: | ★★★★ |
| Category: | Books |
| Genre: | Professional & Technical |
| Author: | Percy W. Blandford |
This book is a delight, especially for beginners and those who enjoy smaller boats. Its eight chapters give the builder the foundation for six different boats, two canvas covered decked canoes, a punt, and three dinghies. In the preface the author describes his work as "a guide for the amateur with little equipment and no experience." The first chapter, "Materials and Methods," touches on woods, plywood, canvas and fasteners and illustrates riveting using boat nails and roves. The discussion of glues, paints and varnishes is dated, in view of modern materials but good for purists wishing to build as it was done in the past.
Chapters 2 and 3 give plans and methods for building an eleven foot and a fifteen foot canvas covered decked canoe (or kayak, if you prefer). Drawings for the frames, stems and sternposts are shown on grids so the builder can enlarge them to full size. Details for sealing the ends are provided too. The instructions for the longer boat include splicing boards if 16 foot stock is not available. The next chapter, "Canoe Accessories," shows how to make paddles, seats, brackets, covers, a trolley and sailing rigs, including a full sloop rig for the longer one.
The fifth chapter details a thirteen foot punt with curved sides and bottom. It's symmetrical end for end, the only difference being an off center thwart and oarlocks. This is the first of the designs to be laid out and built on the floor although no lofting is required, the frames and ends giving the layout. The plans are first given for building with boards with an addition for building with plywood or hardboard.
The ten foot rowing dinghy in Chapter Six doesn't require lofting either but the author uses this chapter to give an introduction to the process. This boat is flat bottomed, built of plywood over frames.
If you'd rather be moved by the wind than oars and you prefer a dinghy with a slight vee bottom, the next chapter has the plan for you. This is a twelve foot, cat rigged boat with a daggerboard that looks like a good introduction to sailing. The sail is hoisted on a gaff that is pulled up to near vertical, parallel to the mast.
The last chapter brings out the most traditional construction. The plan here is for a seven foot, round bottomed pram, clinker built with a planked hull. This boat has a bow board so there is no fitting the planks to a stem post. If that seems too easy, there's the process of treating the ends of the planks, which overlap, flush at the bow board and transom. That sounds like something I'd have to learn by doing, not by reading.
The spirit in which this little handbook was written is summed up in the last line of the preface: "Finally, the statement that there is no fun to equal that to be got from messing about in boats is perfectly true, but to do it in a boat you have built yourself is an immensely satisfying experience which words cannot describe."
Reviewed by Spiritus Solus.
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