Learn the Ins and Outs of Building Lapstrake, Carvel, Stitch-and-Glue, Strip-Planked, and Other Wooden Boats Whether you are contemplating your first-ever boatbuilding project or trying to decide what design you'd like to build next, Greg Rössel can help. Here's just a glimpse of what's inside this complete overview of wooden boatbuilding: How rowing, sailing, paddling, and powerboat designs perform, and how they compare in cost, time, and necessary skills for building How wooden boats are built, including the pros and cons of carvel, lapstrake, dory lap, stitch and glue, strip plank, and other methods How to choose the best boat and building method for your next project How to loft a hull, steam bend frames, scarf a joint, cut a rabbet, laminate stems, and spile planks How to take the lines off an old classic whose plans have been lost How to make oars, spars, coamings, knees, gaff jaws, cleats, and more Greg Rössel writes with warmth, wit, and an engaging style. The Boatbuilder's Apprentice is a must guide for anyone planning or even dreaming about building a wooden boat. “Greg Rössel is a Renaissance man. While there are many talented boatbuilders in the world, only a handful are also good teachers. Even fewer can write or illustrate effectively. Yet this author is highly skilled in each of these areas. . . . The Boatbuilder's Apprentice is a successful blend of technique and wisdom, and is, I believe, destined to become a classic.”-Karen Wales, WoodenBoat Review

This is the story of the author's apprenticeships with Japanese masters to build five unique and endangered traditional boats. It is part ethnography, part instruction, and part the personal story of a wooden boatbuilder fueled by a passion to preserve a craft tradition on the brink of extinction. Over the course of 17 trips to Japan, Douglas Brooks traveled over 30,000 miles to seek out and interview Japan's elderly master boatbuilders; he built boats with five of them, all in their seventies and eighties, between 1996 and 2010. For most of them, Brooks was their sole and last apprentice. Part I introduces significant aspects of traditional Japanese boatbuilding: design, workshop and tools, wood and materials, joinery and fastenings, propulsion, ceremonies, and the apprenticeship system. Part II details each of his five apprenticeships, concluding with a poignant chapter on Japan's sole remaining traditional shipwright. This fascinating book fills a large and long-standing gap in the literature on Japanese crafts, and will be of interest to boatbuilders, woodworkers, and all those impressed with the marvels of Japanese design and workmanship.

At 28 years old, Eli "Berg" Koenigsberg has never encountered a challenge he couldn't push through, until a head injury leaves him with lingering headaches and a weakness for opiates. Berg moves to a remote Northern California town, seeking space and time to recover, but soon finds himself breaking into homes in search of pills. Addled by addiction and chronic pain, Berg meets Alejandro, a reclusive, master boatbuilder, and begins to see a path forward. Alejandro offers Berg honest labor, but more than this, he offers him a new approach to his suffering, a template for survival amid intense pain. Nurtured by his friendship with Alejandro and aided, too, by the comradeship of many in Talinas, Berg begins to return to himself. Written in gleaming prose, this is a story about resilience, community, and what it takes to win back your soul.

Confessions of a Boat Builder recaptures the maritime lore and romance of the last days of the wooden boat and the craftsmen who built them.

A fantastic comprehensive guide to building boats for the amateurs and professionals alike. It will help the amateur to turn out a credible piece of work and aid the apprentice boat builder in learning his trade. If the instructions and methods within this book are followed carefully they will result in well constructed craft that will be seaworthy and weatherly. Profusely illustrated with diagrams and photographs.

John Willey shares insights into life in a Maine boatyard, where he worked and kept a journal from 1978 to '79. As the historian John Gardner confirms, until relatively recently boatbuilding was not recorded - the life of the yard crew even less so. Here is a rare and vibrant narrative from a winter apprentice. ***** "It's great, it really is great. I can see it, and see it all - smell it, taste it, and feel it ... The shop and crew and Paul came through life size. I was there with you, every blessed, excruciating, wonderful minute ... Last night after supper, I sat down with it and didn't get up until I had finished, about 2 a.m." -John Gardner, historian, designer and builder of wooden boats, author of books including Building Classic Small Craft

Greg Rossel grew up cruising the waters of New York Harbor and spending time in the boatyards on the south shore of Staten Island where economics (more than anything else) made wooden boats the craft of choice. He makes his home in Maine where he specializes in the construction and repair of small wooden boats, as well as writing for several publications. Greg has been an instructor at WoodenBoat School in Maine since the mid-1980's, teaching lofting, skiff building, and the "Fundamentals of Boatbuilding".