Looking down the bow of a classic Adirondack Guideboat The fine ends and narrow bottom are typical of the guideboat type. Every dimension of the boat has been reduced and refined to its absolute minimum while maintaining just enough strength to safely carry two people and a load of camping and fishing equipment.
	The extremely fine entry line allows the boat to move quickly through the water. The narrow bottom of a guideboat displaces very little water compared to many canoes with wider, flatter bottoms. The below the water hull area of a guideboat is really more like a fast racing scull than a canoe.
	Interior showing oarsman's seat, ribs, and carrying yoke. These boats weigh in at about 45 to 65 lbs. and are designed to be picked up and carried through the woods. Each finely shaved rib is made from the root portion of a tamarack or spruce tree. The hull planking is 1/4 inch northern white cedar and is screwed to the ribs and copper riveted through the seams.
	The plumb bow and prominent forefoot aides the boat in tracking a straight course on open water. The upswept sheer at the bow helps to deflect waves coming over the bow.
	This boat was built using a lapstrake method where each plank overlaps the one below it rather than a smooth hull as seen on the other boats. I imagine that this would result in a dryer and stronger hull.
	As a comparison, look at this lumberman's bateau I found in the front yard of an antique dealer in northern Maine near the Androscoggin River. This boat, more like a dory than a guideboat is crudely put together. While these boats served their purpose in their time, they are really an entirely different concept.

The construction of one of these boats using the materials shown in the museum examples would take take many hours. Builders who still manufacture these boats are currently charging between $7,000.00 and $10,000 dollars per boat. To acquire the materials alone is laborious since each rib must be gotten out of the butt of a tamarack tree where the grain of the tree follows the curve of the rib.

Though no doubt a sacriledge to the the purists still making boats this way, modern techniques such as epoxy/strip composite construction are an obvious choice for the amateur builder. Glued lapstrake plywood is also a possibility. Both methods offer the advantages of easier maintenance and greater strength than the original method. Most would agree that there is an aesthetic tradeoff that must pay for the labor savings gained by not having to shape each rib. In fact the ribs can be done away with completely and the boat built over a jig or form.

As with all boats, these guideboats have several disadvantages when weighed against other craft of similar intended use such as canoes and kayaks. The obvious one is that the oarsman faces aft. Comical scenes involving an unsuspecting enthusiast about to go over a waterfall may come to mind. Structurally, the big flaw I see in these boats is the weakness in the sheer. The outer sheer gunwale is light and the boats get their stiffness in this area from the strength of the ribs. As a weight saving effort, traditional builders eliminated sheer stiffening thwarts and kept fore and aft decks and breasthooks minimally small.

The epoxy/strip builder, since he is eliminating the ribs all together, would no doubt want to laminate a heavier outwale and add an inwale as well to stiffen the hull at this most vulnerable area. The exchange of rib for inwale, as far as weight is concerned, seems a reasonable adaptation when converting from the old method.

Some modern builders have opted for a combination of methods by eliminating every other rib and covering only the outside in fiberglass cloth and epoxy resin. In the examples I have seen, the insides are not coated with glass but are epoxy coated and then after laboriously sanding all of those nooks and crannies, are either varnished or painted. Though these boats are strong, they are also heavier. I doubt if there is any labor to be saved in their construction but certainly an advantage in ease of maintenance is gained compared to the traditional method.

Other builders have gone to kevlar as the hull material of choice. I've never worked with this material but it probably is the ideal material from a weight and durability standpoint. Aesthetically, the material leaves much to be desired and I hear that to do a decent job, the hull must be layed up in a female mold. This usually excludes this material for the amateur builder because of the labor and cost involved to produce the mold to make just one boat.

I am currently working on a ribless cedar strip/epoxy glass version of a guideboat. Go to my Current Projects page for more details. Others have already done the same thing. Go to my related links page to find other web pages dealing with this and a variety of other boat building and design subjects.