Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice book in great condition. Pages in excellent condition. No notes or highlighting. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> Since the mid nineteen fifties there has been a steady decline in the use of wood for boatbuilding and this has been accompanied by a parallel decline in the number of boatbuilding apprentices serving their time solely ‘in wood’. The majority of boats constructed of wood today are racing craft whose rules require wood to be used one-off boats and small tenders. These days it is seldom the practice even to build a prototype of a production boat in wood. Despite the growing popularity of glassfibre there is still a requirement for knowledgeable and skilled boat- building craftsmen to make patterns for production craft. If one man produces a wooden boat with unfair topsides a more skilled man can be put on the job next time and the company does not suffer a great set-back. At the worst the boat can be returned to the yard and the fault rectified. In glassfibre construction it is a differ- ent story; the bumps and hollows bestowed on the hull plug by the boatbuilder fairing the surface are faithfully reproduced on all the boats which come out of the mould from that plug. Wood boatbuilding still remains an attractive pro- position for the amateur as he is to all intents and pur- poses producing a one-off boat. If you decide to build a wooden boat from scratch there are two ways of doing the job. You can either buy a kit of parts which will often include such items as the bulkheads ready assembled or you can start from scratch and make up the parts yourself. The latter course of action gives you greater freedom to decide on your own details and scantlings but is often such a small financial saving over buying a kit of parts that it is hardly worthwhile. The reason for this is that a boatbuilder who specializes in supplying kits buys his timber in the most suitable sizes to give the minimum of waste when cutting. (LL)