Foreword

During the summer of 1997 I spent a very pleasant week at The Carpenter’s Boat Shop in Pemaquid, Maine, USA. With five other men and two instructors we built a small, 9.5 ft. Monhegan dinghy.

Among many other things, I learned during this workshop that professional boat builders construct their hulls from quality softwood planking on hardwood frames from local available, renewable resources. This is easy when durable cedars grow in your backyard, white oaks are available from your neighbor’s lot, and there is a sawmill at the end of the street. It does not help you much if you live in a big city where you have to pay a small fortune for a piece of decent wood. The price of marine plywood makes one think that the layers are gold plated.

The solution to the expensive wood is the same as it is in any boat building country — build with wood that is locally available at a reasonable price. What is available in a big city is three-millimeter (1/8"), and five-millimeter (1/4") Philippine mahogany plywood, also called Lauan. Its qualities are inferior compared to marine plywood. However, the soft, open grain will absorb a liquid fiberglass resin like a dry sponge absorbs water. The same can be said of open grained, low quality pine.

The marriage of open grained woods with a fiberglass resin enhances the strength of the wood sufficiently to produce safe hulls that, when properly maintained, can last many years — especially when the boat is only used for leisure. It combines low costs with light weight.

There is more good news:

	You don’t have to know anything about boats to be able to build one.
	It requires only the minimum skill of making saw cuts along drawn lines.
	Because it can be set at a fixed angle, a saber saw is the only power tool that you need. The bevels of a few battens must be cut with a table saw. As long as you have access to a table saw, you will be able to manage.
	The project will not cost you more than 10 percent of the price of a new boat.
	Before you start spending real money you can discover at your kitchen table if you like to do the work that is involved by building a cardboard model.
	It makes an ideal parent/teenager project.

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