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I've been building boats since I was 11 years old.a long time ago.and wish this book was around, then. The book, Ultrasimple Boat Building etc. makes building a small boat, literally ultrasimple.
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. Get the book, build a boat, get out on the water. 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. don't sit there dreaming, if it isn't the boat you want you can always build another one. 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.
Read it and build your first boat and enjoy the process. It is well written with accompaning diagrams that explain the process of building stich and glue boats. This book is good guide for builders starting out. The boats range from projects for the first time builder to accomplished builders.
I really like the step by step process Devlin shows on stitch & glue which I am using to build a lighweight dinghy. Devlins are better and seem to be suited for coastal sailing/ motoring. 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.
I had hoped for more larger stitch and glue boats, like in the 15 to 19 foot range such as the Diablo and Diablo Grande. Great boat for really simple very small boats. This is an excellent reference book for someone who has never build any kind of a boat.
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