Below I’ll give you my selections for the best Boat Building books by a few categories. I will cover these and other great books more in depth later.
- Building Classic Small Craft : Complete Plans and Instructions for 47 Boats (2003)
- Boatbuilding for Beginners (and Beyond): Everything You Need to Know to Build a Sailboat, a Rowboat, a Motorboat, a Canoe, and More! (2002)
- Ultrasimple Boat Building: 17 Plywood Boats Anyone Can Build (2007)
- Fiberglass Boat Building for Amateurs (1982)
- Devlin’s Boatbuilding: How to Build Any Boat the Stitch-and-Glue Way (1995)
- Building a Strip Canoe, Second Edition, Revised & Expanded: Full-Sized Plans and Instructions for 8 Easy-To-Build, Field-Tested Canoes (Fox Chapel Publishing) Step-by-Step; 100+ Photos & Illustrations (2010)
- Fuselage Frame Boats: A guide to building skin kayaks and canoes (2011)
- How to Build Wooden Boats: With 16 Small-Boat Designs (Dover Woodworking) (1993)
- Building Tokyo Express: Turning a dream into reality. The building of a 40ft catamaran. (2019)
- Building a Wooden Jon Boat: Tips, Techniques, and Ideas For The Boat Builder (2018)
- Fifty Wooden Boats: A Catalog of Building Plans, Vol.1 (1988)
Building Classic Small Craft : Complete Plans and Instructions for 47 Boats (2003)
“John Gardner’s work has engaged and inspired more individuals connected with traditional small craft than will ever be counted.”–WoodenBoat magazine “Deserves an honored place on the library shelf.”–National Fisherman “Poses clear and impassioned means to go from the armchair to the open water via your own boat shop.”–Sea History This big, handsome legacy volume contains all the plans, measurements, and directions needed to build any of 47 beautiful small boats for oar, sail, or motor.
Boatbuilding for Beginners (and Beyond): Everything You Need to Know to Build a Sailboat, a Rowboat, a Motorboat, a Canoe, and More! (2002)
This book takes the complete novice–armed only with a gleam in the eye, and a basic knowledge of hammer, saw, and screwdriver–and walks him or her through the process of building a boat. The only materials needed are easily available from any lumberyard: plywood, 2x4s, nails, and wood glue. The process is simple, the result is extraordinary–your own boat, ready to sail, in just a week or two, for a fraction of the cost of buying a factory-built (boring!) boat.
Ultrasimple Boat Building: 17 Plywood Boats Anyone Can Build (2007)
In Ultrasimple Boatbuilding, renowned designer Gavin Atkin shows you how to create elegant, seaworthy plywood boats with a minimum of time, experience, and expense. Using clearly written and illustrated step-by-step instructions, Atkin explains the basics of stitch-and-glue construction, tools, materials, shop safety, and more, as he helps you choose and build the simple boat of your dreams.
Fiberglass Boat Building for Amateurs (1982)
Virtually the only manual for building one-off fiberglass boats. Covers every operation including mold-making. Just technical enough to answer the needs of the amateur. Illustrated. #610,751 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #656 in Boating (Books) #105775 in Textbooks Would you like to ?If you are a seller for this product, would you like to ?
Devlin’s Boatbuilding: How to Build Any Boat the Stitch-and-Glue Way (1995)
Why is stitch-and-glue boatbuilding so popular? Any number of construction methods will produce a beautiful boat. But for the backyard builder with limited experience and a tight budget, the choice is not so complicated. Traditional plank-on-frame and cold-molded construction require complicated lofting and building molds–to say nothing of expensive tooling and lots of time.
Building a Strip Canoe, Second Edition, Revised & Expanded: Full-Sized Plans and Instructions for 8 Easy-To-Build, Field-Tested Canoes (Fox Chapel Publishing) Step-by-Step; 100+ Photos & Illustrations (2010)
Easy step-by-step instructions and plans to build your own strip canoe from scratch! An expert outdoorsman and canoe builder who has supervised the construction of more than 500 canoes, Gil Gilatrick shares his voice of experience in guiding both novice and accomplished woodworkers in building a canoe with easy step-by-step instruction.
Fuselage Frame Boats: A guide to building skin kayaks and canoes (2011)
Tired of struggling with that heavy plastic kayak? Are you looking for a lightweight boat but not willing to take out a second mortgage to buy it? What if I told you that you could build a boat weighting less than 35 lbs for $300 to $500? You can and in my new book I will show you how.
How to Build Wooden Boats: With 16 Small-Boat Designs (Dover Woodworking) (1993)
Written especially for the amateur boat builder, this concise guidebook contains clear, practical directions and designs for building 16 modern small boats, rowboats, sailboats, outboards, a 125-class hydroplane, and a runabout. You’ll find detailed step-by-step instructions, with diagrams, for each design presented.
Building Tokyo Express: Turning a dream into reality. The building of a 40ft catamaran. (2019)
Build yourself a home on the water!Living on a boat has a lot going for it, and it‘s more affordable than you think.If you’ve ever dreamed of sailing off over the horizon, but haven’t had the money, there are ways to do it, even on a small budget. Most people buy a boat, but building your own is a rewarding and cost-effective alternative to getting onto the water.For $70,000 (AUD) first-time builder Tim Weston built a 40ft catamaran “Tokyo Express”, in just under 3 years.
Building a Wooden Jon Boat: Tips, Techniques, and Ideas For The Boat Builder (2018)
Do you want to build a simple wooden boat? This book explains in detail the methods and techniques the author has used in the construction of a commercial fishing boat. You will learn how to properly select wood, how to use epoxy resin and fiberglass cloth, and how to incorporate proven techniques to achieve success. Bud uses his years of experience in boat building and design to explain in easy to understand ideas the methods used to build a typical wooden boat.
Fifty Wooden Boats: A Catalog of Building Plans, Vol.1 (1988)
The first in the series, this catalog contains study plans for 50 designs — which range from a 7’7″ pram to a 41’3″ schooner. In addition there are drawings that identify the parts of a wooden boat, a bibliography, a guide for the selection of various woods, and instructions by Weston Farmer on reading boat plans.
Best Boat Building Books Everyone Should Read
We highly recommend you to buy all paper or e-books in a legal way, for example, on Amazon. But sometimes it might be a need to dig deeper beyond the shiny book cover. Before making a purchase, you can visit resources like Library Genesis and download some boat building books mentioned below at your own risk. Once again, we do not host any illegal or copyrighted files, but simply give our visitors a choice and hope they will make a wise decision.
Reedboat building , Reed boat building, Papyrus Boat Building , South American , Reed Boat , Sailboat , Ship Plan Plans
Author(s): Thor Heyerdahl , Gene Savoy , Kitin Munoz , Dominique Goerlitz , Paul Harmon, Alexei Vranich, Phil Buck, John Blashford Snell,
ID: 2322817, Publisher: atlantisbolivia, Year: 2019, Size: 2 Mb, Format: pdf
Making Waves: Michigan's Boat-Building Industry, 1865-2000
Author(s): Scott M Peters
ID: 3591610, Publisher: University of Michigan Press, Year: 2015, Size: 7 Mb, Format: epub
Draw the Draw 50 Way: How to Draw Cats, Puppies, Horses, Buildings, Birds, Aliens, Boats, Trains, and Everything Else Under the Sun
Author(s): Lee J. Ames
ID: 1045100, Publisher: Watson-Guptill, Year: 2012, Size: 22 Mb, Format: epub
Please note that this booklist is not errorless. Some books are absolutely record-breakers according to The New York Times, others are composed by unknown authors. On top of that, you can always find additional tutorials and courses on Coursera, Udemy or edX, for example. Are there any other relevant resources you could recommend? Drop a comment if you have any feedback on the list.