Glued Lapstrake Plywood Construction

This is a five-day course.

Epoxy-fastened plywood lapstrake construction is a modern building method with many advantages over traditional styles. This type of construction can create lighter, stiffer, and stronger boats that better stand up to trailering and require little maintenance, yet maintain all the romantic aesthetics and fine performance of their traditional cousins.

For all of these high-tech advantages, the skills required are still those of the boatbuilder-lofting, spiling, planking, and so forth. In this one week class we’ll combine our group efforts to scratch-build a Gartside designed pram. With many beautifully shaped planks, it will give students a lot of practice in the glue lap process.

The class will explore plans, lofting, and mold making, then get right to it, laminating a stem and building a keel and transom. You will then begin planking the hull, learning the secrets of the rolling bevel and cutting gains. After planking, we’ll  mount the outer stem and a keel strip to beef her up for beaching and trailering. . In addition to all this classic boatbuilding, the project will expose students to the wide world of epoxy construction techniques as well as the practical uses of modern marine plywood as “natural” lumber. The knowledge and skills gained here will prove applicable to a wide variety of boats by numerous designers.