Build the New Instant Boats Paperback – November 1, 2010

This is a great older book on boat building and is still very useful. I have not yet started building a boat, but I will be within the next 2 years. I am interested in something larger than the boats in this book, but that's fine - there is a tender style in this book that I will probably build to go with the larger boat I will be building. I don't look for a "one and done" type of book these days - I have four or five books on boat building and between them all, I can find pretty much all the information I need or get a question answered by trolling the books. Not to mention I love looking at all the different boats and alterations people make to the original. Gives me design ideas of my own!

Forty years ago I stupidly sold my last boat. I have missed it every day since. It was my sixth and best boat, a Chrysler Lonestar. Three of these six boats I built myself, one I shared the work with my father. Building a plywood boat is a bagatelle particularly using the stitch and glue method. The seventh boat is built by this method. In the process I have bought six books from Amazon though all of the information that I needed was free on the internet. The books are “Go Build Your Own Boat” and Build The New Instant Boat by Harold Payson, “Boats with an open Mind” by Philip Bolger, “Boat Building For Beginners” by Jim Michalak, “Ultra Simple Boat Building” by Gavin Atkin and “Understanding Boat Design” by Ted Brewer There are separate reviews for each of these books.“Build The New Instant Boats” by Harold Payson is a superior book compared to”Go Build Your Own Boat.” and I give it five stars. Again we are reading about how to build boats of Bolger's design. There are ten boats and one sail board. One boat is a pedal driven side wheeler and probably not of much interest. The last boat is a large schooner. Bolger designed these boats for plywood and “tack&tape” construction. Tack and tape is similar to stitch and glue. The plywood parts are cut out and tacked together and to frame members. The seams are filled with thickened epoxy and covered with fiberglass tape. The result is structurally identical to stitch and glue. The boat plans are legible and one could actually build the boats from the book. Payson adds instructions about how to proceed. My favorite boat from this book is the 15 footer called Diablo because it is very similar to my lamented Lonestar. If I were younger this is the boat that I would build. Diablo, Gypsy, and Nymph are graceful double chine boats. The smallest boat “Tortoise” is only 6'6'' long. Paysons appendix “Learning To Sail” is excellent. Sadly both Payson and Bolger are now deceased. Plans are available from (...). There is an 8ft version of Tortoise available and a 12ft, version of the 10.5ft, skiff shown in this book. Either would be superior to the revealed versions.

In 1988, I built one of the boats featured in this book. The Windsprint. It was a fun project and it was just too cool to build a sailboat. I wasn't sure my kids were paying attention when their mom started building a 16 foot sailboat in our backyard. Fast forward 35 years and just this summer, my elder son built a wooden boat with my grandchild. He apparently remembered everything about his mom (me) building that boat. So I bought them this book. Payson is (was) a bit of a talker/storyteller but he took good notes from Phillip Bolger, who engineered most of the boats he wrote about. With contemporary epoxies and fastening methods, you can use this as a guide but use more updated glues and epoxies specifically designed for wooden boats.

I like the book, but I bought the kindle version and unfortunately you cant read any of the dimensions on any of the drawings so it makes it difficult to build any of these boats if you cant read the dimensions off the plans. The book is still full of good information so is worth the money spent, it would be a better review if you could actually build something in the book from the plans included. Perhaps the printed version is better, but the digital version lacks in this area.I returned the kindle version and bought the paperback. Drawings are much better and you can read the measurements though for skimmer it is still a bit of a task to build the boat from the drawings. Study the drawing hard and read the "how to" more than once before starting a build.Upgraded review to 4 stars - Dimensions can be read and write up is decent - now to go build a boat.

Lets be clear....As the title suggests, the book is invaluable for it's content. The author's surviving protogee (Dennis) is very helpful and hasn't one wit of problem spending a moment of time for your questions. I recommend you buy the plans for any boat in this book, because the plans are much larger and easier to read and take measurements from.Five Stars for the content: ***** It gives all the background information you need to make good choices for lumbers and glues etc, and has a nice selection of different boats to choose from. I am building the 23.5 ft light schooner this spring. The whole thing is going to cost me less than $1200 including sails and running gear. You can't beat that for a brand new 23 ft day sail.However ... the book was printed on an inkjet. If you get but a single drop of water on any of the print, it will run and bleed through 2 or 3 pages. DON'T get this book wet....and to the printer, get a real print device please.zero stars for the printer...Dennis, find someone else to print it please, and let me know when you do....I'll buy a second copy if it's printed with a laser.

The central subject of this book is the boat plans, and they are not readable in the Kindle version. Amazon did not scan the plans at a resolution that is adequate to read what is written on the plans which, in turn, makes it impossible to get anything from them or usefully refer to them while reading the text. I would probably give the print version of the book around 4 stars, but the Kindle version gets 1 star.

Book is ok just to understand what kind of boats are presented, but it would be far reached to think of building one from the book images and measurements.

Great designs and good instructionsHP takes you through everything, and while pre-knowledge is always nice, this does the lot; he even explains where he's less confident- could you ask for more?Well, he still answers e-mailed questions. No, you could not ask for more.If boat building is your thing, you need to seek this out.

This is one of the best introductions available. You need only this book, some wood, glue and time to build a great boat.I have build 2 so far and can't recommend it highly enough

Very good

Can't read dimensions on drawings.Worthless. Interesting book. Publishermust understand this. can't lend to a friend. Can't leave this to children.