I built the Quick Canoe in a day and a half. This is way slower than some of my customers.

It is the first time I have been disappointed building a complete boat this quick.

The risk of high expectations!

But a day and a half with the problems I had is pretty good.

This page compares the two plywood canoes in my range. Both have detailed plans and are simple to build.

The page is to explain the differences and to help potential builders see if one of the boats suits their needs.

Lots of links to pictures, build articles and even videos.

The cla

Another Quick Canoe built in less than a week. This time by Clinton.

He shows how quick and cheap the boat can be. Probably our friends from the Americas can build for about half this price for the same materials quality.

Cliff and PJ live in Warm Queensland and Wintry Tasmania. However they both like to go the the yearly (June) wooden boat festival in tropical Far North Queensland.

This year they decided to build one of my Quick Canoes. They started on Saturday and finished including putting the canoe on the car roof by the following thursday.

They are experienced woodworkers so added some very nice details.

The plywood “disposable” canoe (see here) has been renamed the more salubrious “Quick Canoe”. I quite liked the name of “Disposable Canoe” but I agreed with the critique that it hinted at something that was poor quality rather than simple and Easy.

It has been designed to be as easy to build as possible while keeping some of the qualities of a good paddling canoe – in particular the ability to track.

Tom has built his MSD Rowboat in Brisbane.

I met up with him recently and we drove down to the coast towing the rowboat to the river at Nudgee. A bit of wind and a lot of current because of all the rain.

Tom has trimmed down the skeg to get the boat to balance nicely in all directions. Before the modification the bow used to blow around – now it behaves nicely.

I took quite a few pictures.

BobWes is a lovely man and has been building his Goat Island Skiff in Sacramento over a few months. He wrote this rather wonderful short piece about what it feels like and what he has learned during the boatbuilding process.

What he has to say about overcoming the limitations of money, time, skills and space is simple but profound.

I don’t have a car so how can I go canoe touring? Its something I fell in love with in the USA on Lake Powell.

This is an idea for a simple, cheap, almost throwaway (or give away) canoe. I can get the materials shipped to somewhere on a river, build the boat over a couple of days then go for a paddle.

At the end I can give the boat away or store it for the next part of the trip.

This podcast/mp3 talks about why Australian (and New Zealand) wooden boatbuilding is different from the rest of the world..

Click to listen to the talk. This is the third of three.

This is the second of my talks in the USA. It focuses a bit more on construction and some of the methods that can be used to keep a boat light and simple, but very strong and stiff.

It also discusses how there is a “creep” in boatbuilding and design that increases the weight of boats way over what is really needed for a strong structure.

From Clinton Chase’s blog clintchaseboatbuilder.blogspot.com

On November 1st I was pleased and honored to introduce Michael Storer, an Australian Boat Designer reputed for his simple, elegant, and approachable boats, to a group of 21 members from the wooden boat community in Maine, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. Some knew of Storer’s work, others have built his boats, and many knew him as an important name and wanted to learn more about the man and his message.

Well a mind-boggling day today. Set is here http://www.flickr.com/photos/boatmik…7622312609441/ Some of the “Coots” boating group organised a joint trip for four of us to Astoria (named after the Astor Family who made their money in the fur industry a couple of hundred years ago. We got up early and went to meet Long 龍 at [...]

Gifted Amateur Boatbuilder Chris Perkins has laboured during some of the most difficult boatbuilding weather to produce the prototype of the new RAID41 (this is the building photoset. It is designed as a one person boat for distance cruising. Once I finish the detail plans, of course. Anyway Brian Pearson, the owner of the boat [...]

First we had a computer drawing Then pics of a mock up model Now we have pics from American where one is being built by some young people as part of the Compass Project organisation’s Classes. Often I am quite surprised by the actual appearance of a boat over what I expect. This plywood rowboat [...]

It is the first boat he has built and Alex is not necessarily taking the quickest way. But he is reporting daily about his building and his ruminations on different subjects. It is a very popular boatbuilding item on the OZ woodwork forum. There have been around 13000 views of his thread already and it [...]

From Koala in Slovenia! He launched his green PDR onto a local river and invited fellow PDR builder Theodor to the launch. Neither of them has sailed before … and they had a great time. Well, we had a launch day on monday!! Beautiful weather, nice wind at first. And it was great. Theodor and [...]

Did you see the slightly modified assembly method we are using now? Just makes the stitching process a bit more controllable. I have some pics of the Eurekas going together in the current Duckflat Autumn school. Which shows how strange the first three panels are when stitched loosely … nothing like a boat … the [...]

It is a bit hard finding information on my forum as the list is not very ordered, so I have attempted to fix this.There is a general building section then each boat is in alphabetical order.To see all the images you may need to become a member, however, they are a good bunch and will [...]