Reader Built Boats

9

September 2020

3’S A CROWD

A true novice’s first boat

Joe Lanni had dreamed of building a boat, but he had a few hand tools for simple projects around the house, no boatbuilding experience and only a deck for a work space. He forged ahead and in two months had a boat that he could row and sail.

5

August 2020

The Turners’ Canoes

A canoe for each man, woman, and child

Frank Turner built a canoe for himself as a new challenge to his woodworking skills. It turned out that he enjoyed paddling and so did his family, so he built three more canoes. One for his wife, and one for each of his two sons.

Small Boats Annual 2022July 2020

Built by the Book

David Parker's Paper Canoe

New Zealander David Parker was in the midst of strip-building a canoe when he decided to use its hull, still upside down on the strongback, as a mold for a canoe made of laminated paper. Paper boats were once hi-tech marvels, but that was in the last third of the 19th century.

June 2020

Simply Grand

Two grandsons team up with their grandfather

Two young brothers in Northwest Washington are lucky to have John Leyde as their grandfather. John, a steamboat enthusiast and serial boatbuilder, enjoys helping friends and family get afloat, so he made space in the workshop he built for a Devlin Bella 12, and he and the boys went to work.

Small Boats Annual 2022May 2020

A Kid-Built Curragh

Working with withies

Grade-school students in a Portland, Oregon, school are doing projects in woodworking class that are much more interesting than building birdhouses. Their teacher brought boatbuilding into the curriculum several years ago and the latest vessels launched are a coracle and a curragh, both built with locally harvested hazel-tree branches.

April 2020

AUDREY/JAMES

A Caledonia Yawl

Martin Casey was a rebellious teenager who often butted heads with his father, James, and it was only near the end of James’s life that the two were able to bridge the distance between them. The boat that Martin built after his father’s death revealed their common interest in the Caledonia Yawl.

Small Boats Annual 2021March 2020

The Yeung Canoe

Sisters, science, and cedar

Strip-building a canoe was an easy project for two sisters in Seattle. As amateur scientists, they’d already designed and built a craft to send cameras to an altitude of 18 miles to record the sweep of the moon’s shadow across the earth during a solar eclipse.

Small Boats Annual 2021February 2020

FALCONE de PALÙ

A Dias Harrier, Venetian style

When Antonio Dias designed his 17’ camp-cruisier, the Harrier, he had accommodations for rowing in mind, but almost certainly didn’t expect that one builder, Detlef Arthur Dueker, would rig his Harrier for

January 2020

LA BELLE OIE

A mesmerizing melonseed

Noah Seixas’ skiff may be small, but it’s much too pretty to escape notice. The 16’ Barto melonseed built by this University of Washington professor is a standout in a city with a wealth of beautiful boats.

December 2019

FESTINA LENTE

A wherry to “Make Haste Slowly”

After Frank Ward retired, he enrolled in classes to learn how to build boats and how to row. When he decided to build a boat to row with his wife, he was drawn to the Annapolis wherry, but preferred cedar-strip construction to a stitch-and-glue plywood kit. The designer was willing and able to accommodate him.

Small Boats Annual 2021November 2019

Alf’s Trap Skiff

60 years in the works

Raised in an island village that has been his family’s home for seven generations, Newfoundlander Alf Manuel was a habitué of the boat shops in his neighborhood and from an early age he was destined to become a skilled boatbuilder. Now 80, he shares with us his trap skiff, an homage to the working boats of his youth.

October 2019

A George Putz Walrus

An experimental skin on an old-school frame

Serial boatbuilder Richard Nissen, who already has a lot of ways to get out on his stretch of the River Thames, added another boat to his fleet. With the book, Wood and Canvas Kayak Building, in hand, Richard followed the instructions for the 17’ wooden frame, but struck out on his own when it came to using canvas for the skin.

Small Boats Annual 2020September 2019

The Kingfisher Elective

A class in boatbuilding

Glenn Joyner was ready to retire after a 43-year-long career as an educator, but the school was reluctant to let him go. Glenn floated an idea: “Build me a boatshop on campus and let me teach boatbuilding instead of English.” The school agreed to his terms and now students have an elective in boatbuilding. Glen-L’s Kingfisher 18 is the latest boat to emerge from the shop.

August 2019

WEE BONNIE

Variations on a classic

Phil Boyer has built four modified Wee Lassie canoes: one in cedar strips, one with a foam hull, and two skin-on-frame, and all named WEE BONNIE after his late sister.

July 2019

DREAM WEAVER

College credit

Two industrial design students at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, Georgia, furthered their education by designing and building a kayak. Their strip-built kayak is as much an artistic expression as a seaworthy vessel.

June 2019

WEE LASSIE SURVIVOR

A memory to hang on to

As a teenager, James Shamis worked for a boatwright who happened to have an old Wee Lassie canoe, and the joy of paddling that diminutive vessel stuck with him for decades. The memories even helped him pull through a bout with cancer. Two days after his last treatment, he started building Gentry’s skin-on-frame version of that classic.

May 2019

BLUE PEARL

Time and money well spent

Mark Bonnette’s grandson, Henry, asked if they could go fishing. When “Grampy” replied, “We don’t have a boat,” Henry said, “Well, let’s build one.” With the design criteria established—two seats, an anchor, oars, and a motor—the pair went to work.

Small Boats Annual 2020April 2019

CHIPS

Carl Kaufmann’s Block Island 19

Carl Kaufmann’s CHIPS is a Block Island 19, a handsome daysailer that he designed and built on Rhode Island’s Block Island. Carl makes guitars and other stringed instruments and brings that level of craftsmanship to his boatbuilding.

March 2019

Craftsmanship and Courage

Peter Sibley

Peter Sibley is an Australian boatbuilder who revels in all of the tasks and tools that go into a boatbuilding project. His Jim, a canoe yawl design from Selway-Fisher, give us a look at the work Peter does, with a little help from his friends.

Small Boats Annual 2020February 2019

Flat-Bottomed Skiff HERON

A new Blake-built boat

Nick Blake, a popular SBM contributor, designed and built an outboard skiff with the help of his father, Daniel. As they have done with the other boats they’ve built, they started with logs from trees grown on the family woodlands and slabbed with a mill only yards from their shop.

January 2019

A Boat of His Own

A square-stern wood-and-canvas canoe

Jon Wiegand built canoes for his kids and a kayak for his wife before he gave much thought to a boat for himself. With the three strip-building projects to his credit, he decided to raise the stakes and build a wood-and-canvas canoe and the form the traditional construction requires.

December 2018

A MacIntosh Canvas Boat

Built by 4th and 5th graders

Brookwood School, serving kids from Pre-K to the 8th grade, decided that building a boat would be a good fit for their “project-based learning” approach to education, so they put fourth- and fifth-grade students to work on a wood-and-canvas tender designed by Ned MacIntosh.

6

November 2018

ODYSSEY

A Marblehead gunning dory

When Harvey Hamel of Kingston, Washington, decided to build a Marblehead gunning dory, he searched for months for good boatbuilding lumber at a good price. A Craigslist ad led him to white oak and clear, old-growth vertical-grain Douglas-fir that had been sitting in a warehouse for 15 years.

Small Boats Annual 2020October 2018

BUTTERFLY

A makeover for a metal boat

Beneath her warm, bright-finished cedar decks, BUTTERFLY is, at her core, an old boat with a heart of…aluminum. If Patrick MacQueen hadn’t saved her, she might have been recycled into cans, pots, and pans.

Small Boats Annual 2020September 2018

Nesting Boats

Tom Hepp's take-aparts for travel

Tom Hepp had had boats growing up, served in the Navy, and chose a career as a merchant mariner, so it’s not surprising that he wanted to take a boat with him when he drove across the country on his vacations. He didn’t want to haul a boat on a trailer or a roof rack, so he decided to make a sectional boat he could pack inside his van.