Boat reflection (Photo credit: Jesper Hauge)
Today I would like to share with you all how you can pick the right wooden boat plans to begin building a boat of your dreams. Did you know that building wooden boats is a becoming very popular and common? Most people think that one has to be very skilled to build a wooden boat, but in most cases this is not true. Personal wooden boats are easy to build and are also low on resources you have to spend.
You can start immediatley if you have just the basic woodworking tools and a place to work. By this I mean some kind of workshop or a improvised tent outside in your backyard. Everything else you may need you can get during your wooden boat build project is on its way. You may already have lots of the needed materials at home and you don’t know it yet.
If you are concerned that space could be an issue for you, let me tell you that any medium to significant sized garage should be sufficient room to build a boat as usualy personal wooden boats don’t have that much length
Once you’ve decided you would like to start building you may require some good ideas to look for the best wooden boat plans.
When looking for wooden boat plans, there’s a few things to have in mind:
- Price – You shouldn’t spend more than $50 to 100$ on a good set of wooden boat plans. You can even grab them cheaper if you dig around a bit. When you find one that fit your needs, grab them and start working. You can find some great wooden boat plans resources in the bottom of this page.
- Detailed Drawings – Wooden boat plans come in vairety of shapes and sizes. The most important thing is they include detailed drawings and instructions. This way you always know what to do next.
- List of Materials – List of materials will help you plan your budget and you will quickly see if you are capable of building a wooden boat. With a complete list of materials there will be tiny left for the imagination whenever you dig in to the project.
- Tried and Tested – Make sure you buy plans that are based on actual boats that have been built and tested.
I advise you to keep this few basic tips in mind when you are buying wooden boat plans, may it be in the store or from the internet. This way you will know you wouldn’t miss any major factors when you start building your dream wooden boat.
Wooden boat plans resources:
- Plans 4 Boats - This website offers you a ebook that contains highly detailed plans with great photo documentation. Author of the book is a very experienced builder and he tries to reveal a lot of boat building tricks and tips in this ebook. All the plans are very well described – down to proper materials selection, plans and numerous details.
- Bateau boats - This is another website which has a little bit modern plans in my opinion. I like some of the designs really much. Specially those Caroilna style plans. I don’t know anyone who has build a boat using their plans but I read quite some posts on their forum and people seem to be very happy with them. They are supposed to be very well documented and easy to build.
- Wooden boat plans – complete list of wooden boat plans resources
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