New Plywood Boats

One day I dream of building the sailboat that will carry me through my retirement years; to that end, I've read a lot of books on boatbuilding, and encountered a lot of strong opinions. And of all the modern-day authors I've read, few are more opinionated than Thomas Firth Jones. Jones doesn't mince words when giving his opinions of designers, materials, or other builders. He's very critical of the stitch-and-glue method, and of builders like Sam Devlin, who strongly favors it- although that didn't stop him from modifying one of Devlin's designs to fit his building style. He is very critical of Phil Bolger's popular small sailboats, though he counts Bolger as a friend, and is effusive in his compliments of Bolgers' powerboat designs. Jones didn't start building boats until he was 40, although he spent a lifetime as a woodworker, and he seems to be very much an autodidact who taught himself a good deal of what he knows about boatbuilding. He's not afraid to describe mistakes he made along the way, or to describe some of his designs as failures. In general, his opinions are backed by experience and experiment. There are exceptions, of course. His knowledge of kayaks, and of kayak paddles, is poor, which wouldn't bother me if he didn't make sweeping generalizations about the optimum paddle for a boat. And his opinions about economics are startlingly ignorant. He doesn't appear to have read much or spoken to many people with different views, and (for example) dismisses Phil Bolger's libertarianism in an almost condescending manner. But those few points aside, this book- and Jones' earlier book- are a treasure trove of ideas about design and construction, and a very useful addition to anyone's boatbuilding library.

Great book, with provisions... For someone with some previous knowledge about boat building, design and terminology this can be a very enjoyable and inspiring book. The boats covered in this book cover a broad range of types, for paddle, oar, sail and power. The information on them however ranges from brief descriptions with hand drawn scetches to fairly complete plans with offsets suitable for someone with previous knowledge of boatbuilding to be able to build from. One would not expect all of the boats to be fully described in plans because some of the boats are not the authors own designs but are included to illustrate the authors experience or modifications of the design. The book was well worth the modest price for me for the one design alone, the 9 foot "Dandy Dingy" which is one of the ones with adequate plans. This boat looks to be fairly easy to build and cute as could be.

It follows the style of Mr. Jones prior book "Low Resistance Boats/ Boats to Go". It is informative on the different methods of building boats and the advantages and disadvantages. It is especially informative to those like myself who often ponder building a wooden boat and have pre-conceived notions that we are going to use "traditional methods". Tom has tried a great variety of methods and candidly admits that some of his pre-conceived notions and methods did not always turn out as he expected. He also describes how modern methods and materials can be used to build boats with a tradional appeal and why traditional is traditional and not always practical.