Back in the 1980′s I was a teenager with a passion for the water and a dream of building my own boat. Any boat probably would have done as long as it was made out of wood, but a cedar strip canoe would be ideal. Now I had some reasonable woodworking skills but for the most part it was just a dream. Then sometime around 1987 I came across an ad for Canoecraft: An Illustrated Guide to Fine Woodstrip Construction by Ted Moores. I bought the book that summer and promptly read it cover to cover. By spring I had the station molds for the Chestnut Prospector drawn out but it would be another 4 years before I actually got to build my first canoe. Not only did that canoe float (and it still does today ), it also got a lot of praise for it’s beautiful looks. Of course I could see the flaws, but most folks were willing to overlook them.

Well around 1999, Ted Moores realized that you could use the same approach to building kayaks and he came out with Kayakcraft: Fine Woodstrip Kayak Construction.

This is the book that Scott and I worked from to build his Endeavour Sea Kayak. So we can show you that this instructions in this book really do work, but what does it cover?

After a quick introduction we get treated to a thorough discussion of kayak design that was contributed by Steve Killing who is the designer of the Endeavour Sea Kayak among many other boats. Ted then walks us through the kayak building process step by step from machining the planking and building the jig through creating the skeleton of stems and sheer clamps, planking & sanding the hull and deck, fibreglassing and then the detailed finishing.

One of the things I really like about both Kayakcraft: Fine Woodstrip Kayak Construction and Canoecraft: An Illustrated Guide to Fine Woodstrip Construction is that they both include the full offset tables for the kayak and canoe designs in the book. Now before you get too excited, these aren’t full sized ready to use plans. What the offset tables give you are the detailed measurements to let you plot out the full sized station molds on graph paper. Nonetheless, after a few winter evenings drawing out the station molds, you’ll be ready to head to the workshop to start building.