Canoe and Kayak Building the Light and Easy Way: How to Build Tough, Super-Safe Boats in Kevlar, Carbon, or Fiberglass Kindle Edition

I bought this book along with composite materials fabrication handbook #1. Between the 2 books I got good understanding of fabrication materials and methods. I am currently in the process of building my own fully decked kayak. I took Sam's design for the "kayoo" hybrid canoe/kayak and adapted it to more of a traditional kayak design. I definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in building their own canoe or kayak. I will post pictures once I am finished. Great book!-------------------------------------------------------Update - There is now a finished picture of my kayak in the customer photos section. It turned out great!

Thorough enough that it talked me out of trying it.

Good book. Explain very well with diagram and photos. It will be my retirement project.

I have built a number of canoes, kayaks and pulling boats using conventional cedar strip or stitch and glue methods, but always opted for conventional fibreglass for the fabric. This book clarifies working with the more exotic carbon and kevlar fabrics, as well as presenting not one but two methods of boat building that I had not encountered before.

There are some excellent books out on building skin-on-frame kayaks using modern materials -- this isn't one of them. The author is very good at impressing us with his credentials, but lamely wastes most of the book upon a pet project that won't work for anybody looking to build either a seagoing, estuary, lake or river kayak OR a canoe OR small boat.As for the other half of the full title's implicit promise -- i.e., showing one how to build a BOAT (e.g., a recreational row-boat, or a small tender for a yacht), well that is completely ignored, making this book essentially a rip-off for buyers expecting to get, as it advertises, instructions on BOAT-building ...I recommend "Building Skin-on-frame Boats" by Robert Morris and also "Building Your Kevlar Canoe" by James Moran for the boatbuilders reading this review, supplemented by articles in Wooden Boat on small craft construction using Kevlar-on-wood-frame technique.I will leave the recommendations for kayak building in Kevlar (etc.) to those with good experience building/using those vessels.

This book gives clear and concise directions for the beginner to expert boat hobbyist. The directions are clear and safety tips and tricks of the trade are given. I plan to build the Dragonfly design within two years, and it even gives where to buy supplies for a great price.

Outstanding book. First saw it in the local library, liked it so much I purchased a copy!

I have very mixed feelings about this book. I made a huge mistake by buying the kindle version. OTOH, I'm about to spring for the paperback version.The kindle version is a complete waste of money. Dimensions in some of the illustrations are illegible on my kindle voyager. However, I was able to read them on a large HD monitor when I downloaded the book through Kindle for PC.The author has a very annoying habit of failing to set the stage. He proceeds step-by-step through his build-process without giving the overview that would help me understand what he's telling me and what I should be getting out of the description to come. So I plod through paragraphs or pages before I understand the big picture - - the framework he should have created - - and then I have to go back and reread those paragraphs or pages to understand how the subsequent details fit into that framework. For example, chapter 9 describes rough-cutting the hull to approximate the sheerline. (The illustration - - when viewed on my desktop PC's monitor - - shows the cut being made well proud of the sheerline.) Chapter 10 goes off on a tangent about model building. Chapter 11 starts by saying it is crucial that I make sure the sheerlines are level: "Before working further, the hull must be leveled..." In chapter 12, I finally realized what I need to understand as I transition from the rough cut to installing the gunwales.There also are various paths (the most significant being the choice of no-deck canoe vs close-deck kayak). The book is actually misleading about material that pertains to those paths. It took several reads through chapters 11 (no deck) and 12 (closed deck) to figure out how much of the discussion in the no-deck chapter was actually a prerequisite for the closed-deck chapter). (The tangent into model building should have been an appendix.)All of which is a long way of saying that this is a book that needs to be read with pen in hand (and, therefore, in hard copy). I do hope the paperback version has wide margins, because I'm going to fill them up with explanatory notes.And I will fill up those margins, because I plan to use many of these techniques to build my next kayak.

Easy reading and informative.

This is a pretty interesting purchase. It allows you to build a canoe or a kayak from a fibreglass. It is a useful book if you want to build a lightweight durable canoe.

Great book, we are making stand up paddle boards using some of the techniques herein. My sons are excited to learn these techniques, and want to build more and more boards. Thanks Sam!