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This book focuses on boats suitable for near-shore and enclosed waters. It provides a good overview of construction materials and methods, but the designs are limited to recreational boats. Those wishing to build a serious sea fishing boat or boat suitable for rough open water will probably be disappointed.
The book, Ultrasimple Boat Building etc. makes building a small boat, literally ultrasimple. I've been building boats since I was 11 years old.a long time ago.and wish this book was around, then.
This book would be great for the first time builder, the designs would help give you the confidence to move on to a bigger more complex boat design, after you see how a sheet of plywood and a couple tubes of polyurethane construction glue turn into a boat. I built two of his designs before he published the book, I discovered gavin from Messing About In Boats, and managed to download his plans from his mouseboats site at yahoogroups. (and the best part is being able to say "I built it my self")The boats would be great for a parent/child project, scout troop, or school project, children are able to paddle under supervision at age 6 or so, and being Captain of your own boat is priceless. Now I have a better grasp of what he was talking about on his website and how some details of construction work. I like that the plans are in a usable size and some of the designs that I had a hard time downloading are printed out in the book. Get the book, build a boat, get out on the water. don't sit there dreaming, if it isn't the boat you want you can always build another one.
This book is good guide for builders starting out. The boats range from projects for the first time builder to accomplished builders. It is well written with accompaning diagrams that explain the process of building stich and glue boats. Read it and build your first boat and enjoy the process.
I got this Atkins book along with the Devlin one and Devlin's stitch & glue book is much better. Atkin's boats in his book are mainly shallow draft pond type boats. Devlins are better and seem to be suited for coastal sailing/ motoring. I really like the step by step process Devlin shows on stitch & glue which I am using to build a lighweight dinghy.
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