Books for the boat butcher/builder...

I really love good cookbooks and it occurred to me yesterday that I use boat building books much like I use cookbooks...

Which is to say that I use them more as a jumping off place or a thinking aid rather than an actual guide. A good boat building book or cookbook gets me thinking. Truth be told, I can't remember the last time I actually made a recipe to spec from a cookbook or did a project from a boat building book as described.

When I'm doing a boat project it is a normal state of affairs that the various books come off the shelf and as I leaf through them the actual project comes into focus and new ideas creep in which expands the horizon... Sort of a serendipitous approach if you will.

Bruce Bingham's "The Sailor's Sketchbook" is just such a book. Crammed with ideas of all sorts, it's almost impossible to thumb through the book without having a EUREKA moment or two. My copy has helped me build three boats and countless rehab and improvement projects. Fact is, I really have to get a new copy as the one I have is now held together with tape and epoxy... It's been used that much!

The next most used books onboard are the various Phil Bolger books on design, which always have a way of solving problems by simply not being the same old same...

Fred Bingham's "Boat Joinery and Cabinet Making" always gets a look through where most projects are concerned, as does George Buehler's "Buehler's Backyard Boatbuilding" and Parker's "The New Cold-Molding Boatbuilding" whose epoxy stained pages give silent testament to their needfulness.

The fact that I'm on my third copy of "The Gougeon Brothers On Boat Construction" I think pretty much says how often this book gets used...

Astute readers may have noticed that none of the various books mentioned are on the same page or even agree very often... and that, dear reader, is where they make you, the boatbuilder, THINK, which is after all the whole point of the exercise!