Store | Russell Boats Berkshire Boat Building School

For purchasing information, please see the bottom of this page.

Building Skin-on-Frame
Double Paddle Canoes

This 150-page book, with its 120 photographs and drawings, details how you can build light, beautiful skin-on-frame-boats.

Also check out our twenty-five minute YouTube video How to Build Skin-on-Frame Double Paddle Canoes, which has a table of contents so you can go right to the part you want to see, including chapters on lashing, steaming, skinning and more.

The perfect bound book $27,
and the popular, spiral bound $29
(plus $4 shipping)

Have a look inside

To enlarge, use >> at top right and select Current View.

For a new book by Hilary Russell, "Tugboats and Shipyards: The Russells of New York Harbor, 1844-1962,"

visit What's New or Tugboats and Shipyards site.

Books

Here is our new
25 lb. Solo 11 ½’ Plus

and our

18 lb. Solo 10

For details, see the WHAT’S NEW page.

Boats for Sale

Because of the flexible nature of skin-on-frame boats, you can create more than 30 different boat designs from the 4 sets of plans below.

How to Make Elegant Variations: ways to adjust your boat’s length, width, and general shape by changing the positions of forms and/or adding forms.

To produce a sleeker and/or an asymmetrical craft with a bit less volume, move both or one of the end forms inward up to 3½.”
To gain some length and narrow ends, simply add up to 2 inches at both ends of the gunwales beyond the two outside forms.
Make a 13½’ canoe or kayak 15½’ long by adding 3½” between forms; or use the same method to make a 11½’ solo boat two feet longer.
Make an 11½’ canoe 13½', and also widen the boat about an inch by making a second center form, giving you six forms.
Of course you can also shorten these boats by reversing the techniques above. For instance, you can have a wider, fuller 11½’ solo canoe by shortening the 13½’ tandem/solo canoe.