Building Skin-on-Frame Boats

Rating:
Summary: Review of Building Skin-on-Frame boats
Review: An exellent book. Detailed where necessary, but still concise. I am in the process of building the Greenland design that Morris recommends as a first qayaq and find the directions easy to follow and complete.
You can order supplies from Morris if you choose to build a boat.

Rating:
Summary: Review of Building Skin-on-Frame boats
Review: An exellent book. Detailed where necessary, but still concise. I am in the process of building the Greenland design that Morris recommends as a first qayaq and find the directions easy to follow and complete.
You can order supplies from Morris if you choose to build a boat.

Rating:
Summary: Great book for learning how to build a skin boat
Review: Great pictures and drawings. Occasional unclear directions, but over-all, this is the best book I have ever seen for building a
skin boat.

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Summary: Building Skin-on-Frame Boats
Review: Just plainly superb.

Rating:
Summary: An outstanding work
Review: Robert Morris has built a lot of skin-on-frame boats in his shop- not just kayaks, but canoes, dinghies and other forms as well. He's used a number of different woods, skin materials, coatings, designs and techniques, and they're all summarized here in magnificent detail. There are scores of photos, detailed drawings, historical notes, boat plans, discussions of tools and technique as well as extensive discussion of hulls design and dynamics. Miller understands the whys of hulls; he will tell you how moving a strake closer to the keel or the gunwhales will change the behavior of a boat, and why you should heep the skin suspended off the ribs.

If you have the urge to built a skin-on-frame boat- or even if you're just curious about the topic, you need this book. As good as previous books on the subject by George Putz, Wolfgang Brinck and H. C. Petersen have been (and I have them all), this book goes a step further. I've been reading all I can find on the topic in preperation for building my first skin-on-frame kayak, and with this book my research is finished.

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Summary: For builders of traditional kayaks
Review: The book is very well written, though I found the stability to length and beam explanations to be cut short. I do not believe that this is for a first time kayak builder. This is for those interested in building kayaks using traditional methods and for those who wish to push the envelope. As someone looking at building a skin on frame kayak to get into the sport of recreational kayaking (I can't afford a factory assembled kayak), I prefer a less labor intensive method, such as plywood frame members and glue and screw connections vs. lashing everything. I would have liked to have seen the author discuss the pros and cons of other methods, but his take seemed to be that this was the only way he knew to build kayaks.

Overall, it is a useful book, I believe it should be part of anyone's kayak building reference library and provides ideas for making modifications to the plywood frame kayaks and many of the methods can be applied to other skin on frame kayak plans. I would not recommend a first time kayaker try to build using this method unless you are really dedicated since it looks to be time consuming and a bit complicated compared to other methods I have seen.

Rating:
Summary: Best Skin-On-Frme book available
Review: There are a lot of good books out on the subject of Skin-On-Frame (SOF) but they don't match "Building Skin-On-Frame Boats" for building a traditional boat. A lot of detail goes into using the body as a measurement ruler. Each boat is custom fitted to the owner/user. If you want a boat that fits you right and are interrested in SOF, buy this book.

PS even though the binding is starting to fall apart, I'm giving this book 5 stars for excellant content.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderfull Book
Review: This book is worth the price for the recovery kayak information alone!