This Months Books
December 05-January 2006
This is an article from WaveLength Magazine, available in print in North America and globally on the web.
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by Diana Mumford
Kayaks You Can Build: An Illustrated Guide to Plywood Constructionby Ted Moores & Greg Rössel Firefly Books, 2004 ISBN 1-55297-861-3 Given the combined credentials and experience of the co-authors of this book, you can be sure it’s full of thoughtful, helpful advice from which all home builders of plywood kayaks will benefit. Ted Moores pioneered the woodstrip-epoxy boat building system for canoes, owns and operates Bear Mountain Boat Shop in Ontario, and is the author of Kayakcraft and Canoecraft. Greg Rössel is the author of Building Small Boats and is an instructor at the Wooden Boat School in Maine. Kayaks You Can Build sets the stage by first outlining a brief history of the recreational kayak, considerations for choosing a kayak that is right for you, and professional advice for setting up your workshop and gathering tools and supplies. It goes on to describe, in reassuring detail, techniques for building plywood boats before launching into the step-by-step process for building three different boat kits—the Coho by Pygmy, the Mill Creek 13 and Bear Mountain’s Enterprise. Sidebars throughout highlight Safety Tips, “Think Lazy” construction tips and “Cheap Tricks” for keeping the cost down, gleaned from years of experience. With this excellent guide at hand, building a unique, custom kayak is within the reach of those who either choose to build for the joy of creating something beautiful, or need to build in order to own a boat they can afford. Having this book as your guide is the next best thing to the authors’ personal instruction. |
Stitch-and-Glue Boatbuilding: How to Build Kayaks and Other Small Boatsby Chris Kulczycki McGraw-Hill, 2005 ISBN 0-07-144093-3 Chris Kulczcki, founder of Chesapeake Light Craft, and expert builder, writer and teacher, wrote this guide to demonstrate an easy, fast method for building a strong, seaworthy craft with your own hands. In the Introduction Chris writes, “A small wooden boat is a piece of art that we can use in our everyday lives”. He advocates for small boats because they are simple to use, and they reduce, rather than add to the complexity of modern life. This is a guide to creating your own piece of useable art. The guide includes a thorough discussion of the woods, epoxy, fiberglass and fasteners used by home-based boat builders, and discusses the hand and power tools that will help make your project easy to complete. Even though you will likely buy plans or a complete kit for your project, he also discusses the design concepts and skills that are essential elements of boat building. Stitch-and-glue techniques are laid out, and then the details for building specific boats are listed. |
Bill Mason Wilderness Artist: from heart to handby Ken Buck Rocky Mountain Books, 2005 ISBN 1-894765-60-5 Seventeen years after Bill Mason’s death, and more that thirty years after they first met, his friend and colleague, Ken Buck, has released this memorial to Bill’s lifework. It is a volume that explores Bill’s personal history as well as his artistic career—a full and varied career which included photography, cartoons, books and films developed for the National Film Board of Canada. This was a career that was heavily influenced by Bill’s love of nature. Acclaimed as Canada’s foremost canoeing artist, Bill himself wasn’t sure if he was a painter who loved to canoe or a canoeist who loved to paint. Ken Buck first became acquainted with the Mason family in 1968, and two years later accepted an invitation to film their annual family canoe trip on the French River. This was a pivotal time in Buck’s life, which led to a career change from teaching to film making, and a long-term professional relationship with Bill Mason. Bill Mason Wilderness Artist is the result of Ken’s decision to put together a family album about working with Bill on his well-loved canoe films—a project that blossomed into a full-fledged book documenting his entire career. The book begins with Mason’s childhood and the major influences which shaped his vocation as an environmental educator. Subsequent chapters explore various means of expression that Mason used to deliver his message: painting, commercial art, animation, cartooning, films and photography. He ends with a profile of Bill’s unpretentious studio in the woods—a sanctuary and retreat where Canadian stories were brought to life by a man who was passionate about the role of story-telling in shaping the country’s identity. Bill Mason Wilderness Artist will make fascinating reading for paddlers, for anyone who loves the wilderness, and those who are interested in the work of this foremost Canadian artist. (Bill’s son’s cartoons appear in each issue of WaveLength and on our website). |
Bark Canoes: The Art and Obsession of Tappan Adneyby John Jennings Firefly Books, 2004 ISBN 1-55297-733-1 Bark Canoes is a photographic gallery of the extraordinary work of a remarkable man. Edwin Tappan Adney (1869– 1950) meticulously created over 100 scale models of bark canoes to preserve a history that he feared would be lost to the passage of time and modernization of North American life. After years of first-hand research—observation and interviews with Native builders—during his experience as a correspondent for Harper’s Weekly and the London Chronicle, Adney became obsessed with accurately recording every aspect of North American canoe building. He used authentic materials and techniques to create models that represented the canoes that had an enormous influence in the lives of North America’s aboriginal peoples, the first visitors, and subsequent settlers of this continent. Adney’s collection is now housed at the Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, Virginia. This book brings the collection to those who are unable to visit the museum and also contains a biography of the man who created this valuable historical record. |
Raincoast Chronicles Fourth FiveEdited by Howard White Harbour Publishing, 2005 ISBN 1-55017-372-3 This handsome edition of Raincoast Chronicles, including issues sixteen to twenty, is the biggest and best of the now familiar and well-loved compilations of stories, poems, articles and photos collected by Howard White to celebrate the history and culture of BC’s coast. In this volume you will find thirty-two pieces, including a history of Telegraph Cove by Pat Wastell Norris, whose father built the boardwalk and the buildings that flank it. This is not only a history of the Cove, but a memoir of someone who grew up there, a personal account of life in the Cove during an exciting period of coastal history. Another essay, by Stephen Hume, documents the lives of some of BC’s frontier women—all manner of women from mothers, tourists and dance hall queens to society ladies and artists, and from the first women who lived along these shores as members of First Nations to contemporary homesteaders. In addition to these two longer features, you will be treated to the usual collection of shorter pieces and archival photos that collectively capture the essence of life on the coast in days gone by—not by outsiders looking on, but by the people who made the history. This is another must-have for the libraries of anyone fascinated by the colorful and dramatic history of the BC coast. |
