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Rating:  -
This book was written by a man that isn't sure if he wants to write a love novel or a how to book. Every other paragraph goes off into stories of old origin and there are comments all over the book about stupid humor. I expected this book to be a lot more serious. I have build wooden boats in the past and am familiar with the terms which I encountered so that is not my objection. I only bought this book because it was required reading for my studies but not a single student in our class read one chapter completely. Everybody complained about the writing style. Three paragraphs into a description and you will forget about what the original intent was because the author sidetracks soo much. "Bud" has experience from what I hear but he does not know how to convey it into text.
Rating:  -
Great book for a beginner. There are a lot of details that require more research, but it's a great jumping off point.
Rating:  -
I bought this for my husband and to help me understand the process of building. It succeeded for me, and James said it gives a good over-view of boat building and answered a lot of questions, but needs to be backed up with Details of Classic Boat Building if someone is actually building their first wooden boat.
Rating:  -
Mr. McIntosh is quite obviously a master of his craft. Sadly, though, he's an exceedingly poor teacher, and one would need to be both in order to write this book well. Needlessly (sometimes infuriatingly) verbose, the author buries critical theses in an avalanche of lyrical verbiage that achieves nothing other than obscuration of the point. Illustrations that accompany the text rarely help to clarify the written instruction. An application or two of the K.I.S.S. principle would have worked wonders here. Recommended only for those who already know how to build a wooden boat.
Rating: -
The day I first met the late New England boat builder Bud McIntosh he was down in the hold of a schooner's hull setting keel bolts--and singing Homer's Iliad in ancient Greek. He stopped when he saw me peaking through a gap in the planks (probably amused by my mouth hanging open in wonder and awe) and asked: "You like boats?" Well I did, and I was there to ask him a question about planking a skiff I was building for my family.
Bud not only answered that question, but he answered many more boat and woodworking-related questions over the ensuing years. When I began to combine writing with my woodworking, Bud gave me the most valuable and fundamental piece of advice I needed to hear: "Write what you know--and if you enjoy doing what you know, people will enjoy reading what you have to say about it."
He should know, because that is exactly what he did in his own book. Not only does How to Build a Wooden Boat offer us one of the clearest explanations of building a traditional wooden boat ever presented, it does so in a way filled with humor and lively anecdotes. (Don't miss the one about what happened when a bunch of tipsy boatbuilders volunteered to build their late buddy's coffin). Though I never went on to build boats of this scale myself, I continue to consult Bud's book whenever I want a definitive answer on how to lay out curved components, or design joints to shed water, or find an answer to any number of questions where the technology of traditional wooden boats can give us proven answers.
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