devlin’s boat building

Why is stitch-and-glue boatbuilding so popular? Any number of construction methods will produce a beautiful boat. But for the backyard builder with limited experience and a tight budget, the choice is not so complicated. Traditional plank-on-frame and cold-molded construction require complicated lofting and building molds (to say nothing of expensive tooling and lots of time). Stitch-and-glue construction, on the other hand, can produce the same results with a substantial savings in time and money. The process is quicker, easier, uses fewer parts and produces a boat that is much easier to maintain (without the building molds and with only the simplest lofting). For tools, you need little more than a circular saw, a sander/polisher/grinder, a block plane, a framing square, a level and a tape measure. Here is all you need to know to build the boat of your dreams, whether it’s a 7-foot dinghy or a 40-foot power cruiser. It’s all here, from choosing a design and setting up shop to painting the finished hull and launching. There is also a gallery of Devlin’s designs and a detailed appendix listing sources for tools and other materials.