Illustrated Guide to Wood Strip Canoe Building

Rating:
Summary: Most comprehensive book on strip building
Review: I have just completed Mac McCarthy's Wee Lassie using this book. The amount of detail in the book answered all my questions and some of the techniques (like reinforcing the deck with thin marine plywood) was better than using carlins and stripping the deck onto the carlins. I had no trouble building the boat. I built the boat with no staples or nails. Her stapleless building technique was straight forward and easy to do. The most difficult part was beveling the inside stems. I would not bevel the entire stem at once, but bevel as I stripped. The only part of McCarthy's book worth having are the mold patterns for the canoes. This book is the one you need to actually build the canoe.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent book for the beginning builder
Review: I used this book extensively along with my regular plans book when building my Cosine Wherry. The well done illustrations and explanations helped answer many a question on "how" or "why" do do a particular building task. A highly recommended book.

Rating:
Summary: A poor rehash
Review: Like the other wood strip boat building books around, what is ommitted is more important than what is included.

The most important ommission: After you have made all of your material and construction choices and have a finished "boat", how do you determine if the boat is save for your spouse to paddle alone?

A boat that looks nice is not always a boat that is safe to paddle.

Rating:
Summary: An excellent addition to the canoe building literature.
Review: This book has two great features. One is the fantastic color photographs showing the process of building a wood strip canoe. The second is that the author answers questions and gives details of construction that most other authors on the subject gloss over or ignore. The only negatives are the poor quality binding and the tiny size of the print.

Rating:
Summary: Makes the strip-building process very easy to understand.
Review: This is an excellent book with many photographs and illustrations that will make it easy to understand the building process. It should help put many more "works of art" on the rivers and lakes of North America.

Rating:
Summary: Reveiw Illustrated guie to canoe buildilg
Review: Very good color pictures, but not always helpful. Gives a lot of different approaches and methods but leaves the choice to the reader, It is obvious, and sometimes stated, that she has no experience with some of even the more basic ones.