What Are The Various Methods For Building Boats Out Of Wood?

You'll find essentially four construction techniques when building wooden boats; strip planking, lapstrake planking, carvel planking, and plywood construction. Sometimes a mixture will be utilized for custom built wooden boats.

Let us start with the most undesirable of all construction techniques; plywood. Typically speaking plywood is restricted to the deck, joinery and very small wooden boats for the amateur wood boat builder. That is certainly not to say that a boat can not be built from marine plywood, some older wooden boats, generally v hulls, were often plywood planked over a durable framework of sawn frames and longitudinal stringers. After they've been covered in fiberglass fabric and set with resin they could remain seaworthy for many years, with a lot care. Modern plywood construction practically always incorporates epoxy. If hull planking is laminated from two or more levels of thinner plywood, the result practically mirrors cold-molded construction. Plywood's major limitation is its incapacity to bend in two directions at once, and some wooden boat plans have adopted a radius chine to conquer the disadvantages of a chine hull form. Plywood is being increasingly used as a planking material for lapstrake hulls bonded with epoxy.

Strip planking now brings together traditional techniques with more contemporary developments. Traditional strip planking for small wood boats is very much like carvel planking, in that the backbone, set up and construction technique are the same. Furthermore the planking is connected backbone and body in much the same method. The more modern day strip planking has more characteristics of cold mold planking. Newer wooden boats with strip-planked hulls are generally glued with epoxy, and may be built without frames, with glass fabric or other reinforcing (set in epoxy) providing the essential strength. Backbones are almost always laminated, utilizing an interior and outer stem that simplifies both setting up and planking.


To outline the form of the carvel plank hull, a ribcage of sorts is added to the backbone. This is done first with molds, which may be thought of as temporary bulkheads spaced every few ft for the entire duration of the boat. At this point once the form has been set up, ribbands, or longitudinal stringers, are fastened over the molds. The molds and ribbands with each other form the framework over which a carvel wood boat hull is built.

Lapstrake hulls generally use a backbone comparable to a carvel wooden planked boat. Planks are lapped over each other and fixed at each lap, giving an even and unfinished hull with significant strength. This allows lapstrake hulls to be framed after they've been planked, as opposed to before, meaning that ribbands can be dispensed with when setting up. Molds are erected on the backbone just like carvel planking, but they are generally far more widely spaced. Because there are fewer molds, the form of the boat will largely be determined by the flexibility of the wood.

Hagadone Marine can help you choose a good wooden boat in Spokane, irrespective of the construction. It is best anytime you are purchasing a wooden boat, to have it surveyed or to purchase it from a reliable wood boat dealer.

For more information about owning a boat built from wood, contact our Sales Center @ 866.525.3232 or via email pauln@hagadonemarine.com. For restoration services contact the Resort Boat Shop @ 208-667-5099 or via email eobrien@hagadonemarine.com. You can also visit us on the web @ www(dot)hagadonemarine(dot)com