Books

On this page I list some books that has come to use while building the boat and decide what design to build. If you click on the link you get to Amazon and read some more reviews. If you buy the book, I get a gift certificate from Amazon.

Gougeon Brothers on Boat Construction :... by the Gougeon Brothers
This is a must have when using epoxy. Written by the Gougeon Brothers who are behind the West Epoxy brand. Not so fun, maybe, and quite oriented towards lightweight hulls. But I come back to this book all the time. How long should a scarf joint be? What's the density of spruce anyway? It introduces the building techniques you must know when working with epoxy. They show how to really put a high standard on your work. Something to aim for...

Boatbuilding : A Complete Handbook of... by Howard I. Chapelle
This is the boatbuilding book I used to learn all the terms in English so I understood the plans I bought. It is a really good book on traditional boatbuilding. It's quite complicated though and written in some years ago.

Practical Junk Rig : Design,... by H.G. Hasler & McLeod
This book is of course a must if you are going to use the Chinese junk rig. More information on the junk rig is available at this Yahoo discussion group.

Steel Boatbuilding : From Plans to... By Thomas E. Colvin
I am not building a steel boat. But when I read this book it made me want to. This book is really interesting for anyone building a boat. Lots of wisdom. Check out Tom Colvins own website. He has some interesting ideas on junk rig as well. He likes to makes his sails from "Top Gun", a material normally used for sail covers. I have a sample. It is a bit stretchy diagonally compared to ordinary polyester cloth. I wonder how it stand up to chafe? He wrote this to me on the now classic Hasler rig:
"A good check on whether or not you have the correct shape to the sail is to plot out the individual centers of effort of each panel. A line connected through them should form sort of an S curve with the upper panels progressively moving forward. In Hasler's type of sail, the upper panels more progressively aft, and the result is that it is not a very efficient sail."

Lofting By Allan H. Vaitses
Well. I used this book, Colvin, Chapelle and Gougeon Brothers to help me loft the boat. And some help from the designer Tom MacNaughton. I suppose you can never get enough help lofting. Not that it is very difficult, but it's the first thing you do, so you get a bit nervous... How wrong can a line be before it is wrong? was the question I never got answered, though.