Product Reviews
Sleeveless Sanding Drums
Ordinary sandpaper, softer contours
...when it
Technique
Copper Guards
Traditional protection for oars
...up when pushing off docks, clipping pilings, and scraping across rocky shallows. The tips of the blades get the worst of it, and you can reinforce them with hardwood, epoxy, fiberglass, or a
Product Reviews
Blackbird XLC and Thunderfly
A hammock system from Warbonnet
...on the landscape. It’s
Product Reviews
eTape16
A digital tape measure
...it eats up time and verges on an OCD behavior. My potential
Reader Built Boats
Flat-Bottomed Skiff HERON
A new Blake-built boat
...launching. Plywood bottoms, of course, eliminated the seams, but would be best protected by fiberglass and epoxy,
Boat Profile
Ed Monk Skiff
A working tender from 1943
...the no-nonsense hardwor
News and Curiosities
Electric Fantail Launch DORA Available for Charter at The Center for Wooden Boats
...electric motor and control system produced by Elco, the descendant of the Electric Launch
Technique
Long-Reach Clamps
Big jaws with bite
...with any of the other boats I’d built; one was wor
Product Reviews
Thin Rip Table Saw Jig
An Aid to Lamination
photographs by the author The ball-bearing equipped jig, along with a shop-made, zero-clearance, table saw insert, makes ripping strips
Boat Profile
Penguin
The comforts of home in a 21' trailer yacht
...to
Boat Profile
Ultra-Light Solo Packboat
A versatile Kevlar rowing boat
...white clouds. These are wonderful and fun times, and my Solo Packboat is what makes these moments possible. Each 12′ Ultra-Light Solo Packboat is hand-crafted one at a time by the Martin brothers, Justin and Ian, of the Adirondack Guideboat
Reader Built Boats
A Skiff to Fill the Time
Boatbuilding during a lockdown
...will be time well spent. Do you have a boat with an interesting story? Please email us. We’d like to hear about it and share it with other Small Boats Magazine readers.
Reader Built Boats
PUDDLE DUCK
A pram started in 1945 and launched in 2020
In 1936, Kenneth With bought a 24′ cabin cruiser, secondhand,
From The Editor
“Not because they are easy”
...a start. I got as far as stetting the frames on the bottom of the dory skiff that was my first real boatbuilding project. A batten sprung around them showed the frames weren’t all ma
Product Reviews
Chef’s Knife and Floating Sunglasses
Offerings from MSR and Rheos
MSR’s Alpine Chef’s Knife
Product Reviews
Sealskinz
Waterproof warmth for the extremities
...Sealskinz socks in 1998, and they have performed well and held up
Product Reviews
Woodboy
A fine-toothed saw from Silky
...straight position. A second setting angles the blade up from the line of the cutting edge. The Silky’s Woodbay is an update of the kataba, with modern
Product Reviews
TotalFair
Quick and easy epoxy fairing compound
...The opaque
Product Reviews
7 Seas 3-Eye Sneaker
A flexible boat shoe from Sperry
...liveaboard sailboat. The Sperry 7-Seas 3-Eye Sneakers are available from Sperry
Product Reviews
Ono Hatchet
A camper's hatchet from Silky
...quite hard, but the Ono cut though a 1″-thick section of the branch, set on a log, with one blow; a 1-1/2″-thick branch took two blows. I sawed a length from the 3″-thick end of another branch, set it on end on a log, and easily split it into kindling. The Ono’s heft and sharp blade give it good chopping...
Technique
A DIY Sling Tote
A handy carryall for small-boat gear
When Ben Fuller proposed an article on bags and totes
From The Editor
Lit
Like a moth to a flame
...fire would die down and the shop would cool overnight, but it never dropped below 50 degrees, even when it was
Reader Built Boats
AL DEMANY CHIMAN
A skin-on-frame outrigger canoe
...at the Apprentice
From The Editor
Forlorn
Languishing under the eaves
...eave, lie a snow shovel, a spade, leaf and garden rakes, and a lawn edger. They are all showing the effects of exposure to the weather—rust, peeling varnish, wood turned leaden gray—but
Boat Profile, Whitehall Tender,
Whitehall 17
A classic form, strip-built, from Glen-L
...