Kayaks You Can Build: An Illustrated Guide to Plywood Construction

This book is more complete than the manual that came with the two Chesapeake kayaks I built this year or "The New Kayak Shop" I used to augment the manual. It would not serve as a stand alone as it does not include plans.However, given plans or a kit this book will provide basic and detailed techniques, and special tricks that will help you build a very good boat. I will read it very carefully before building my next.The organization makes it especially useful as a reference book. A little over half of it covers the techniques for building and finishing stitch and glue kayaks. The remaining portion is a step by step log of the actual building of Chesapeake Mill Creek, a Pygmy Coho, and a Bear Mountain Enterprise. The Enterprise is a hybrid with a stitch and glue hull and strip built deck.The authors are very much on appearance rather than performance. There is much detail on varnishing. Note that the three kayaks built here do not have a hatch on the front deck (They didn't want to clutter their beautiful staining and varnishing.)so don't look for guidance on laying out your deck rigging.This is by far the most complete reference I've seen on this type of boat construction.

Not great as far as specific plans, but shows how beautiful a home built kayak can be.

Its a good overview of how to build a plywood kayak KIT. It does not give you any plans to build one from scratch.. If you are looking for a good overview of what will be involved, and some caveats to the construction it is a good guide.

There are so many tips and good ideas in this book. It is definetly worth it, Starting with building the ideal workbench, the ideas for using the templates to hold in the sides to fiberglass it as one piece instead of cutting it up to fit inbetween the bulkheads. Lots of nice color pictures, beautiful presentation. I'd definely recommend this book.

The book seems sensibly organized for the construction process. It offers pro tips and warns of potential pitfalls to avoid. I think it will be an asset for my kayak build.

This book is the most through that i have seen and I have looked at most every kayak book made. It will help anyone wanting to learn stitch and glue methods for kayaks or small boats. GET THIS ONE!

Great book for the beginner, outlining all steps clearly and effectively while not overwhelming the beginner in technical jargon and terminology.

There are no plans in this book, they are only instructions on how to put together a kit you purchase from the author. It's pretty difficult to determine who this book is for. Is the author selling kits with no or poor instructions and people have to purchase this book to build their kit? If you do buy a kit, why do you have to purchase this book which contains instructions on several other kits you don't need? I can't see why this book is sold on Amazon, or anyplace other than the website the kits are sold on. IMHO the book is just an advertisement used to distract you from a good book on this topic in the hopes that once you get the book you'll buy one of the author's kits. This is one of those purchases that teaches you to be very careful about what you buy in the future.

I'm genuinely amazed how comprehensive this book seems to be.I really feel confident that I can successfully build a kayak (if I can find the space and the hours required to do it) just using this book as a guide.

great pics and lots of reading..still havent read it all but gives good coverage of how to build your own

Useful for the kajak builder

Wer hier Baupläne erwartet wird enttäuscht. Hier werden lediglich die Arbeitsschritte anhand von 3 käuflichen Bausätzen erläutert. Identische Anleitungen können kostenlos als videos in YouTube unter z. B. Berger boote angesehen werden.

We'll be using this book to build a Mill Creek 13 Kayak. From what we've seen thus far, the book appears to be excellent.