Sounds like you should get out your typewriter and get busy on a book.

As I understand it, in your opinion Nick's designs are a bit overbuilt, which would buffer imperfections in the building process. Anyone who is going to buy a book like this and start building from it would be expected to understand the basics of shop techniques and boat construction, or at least to be intelligent enough to no where he needs help, and to go get it. If there were any doubt in my mind about my ability to build a kayak, I'd probably buy a kit and/or plans, and talk to experienced builders.

I've never owned anything that I didn't think could be improved, especially when it comes to shop manuals. I'd like to hear what parts of the book you liked, as well as the areas you thought were weak.

Our society is no longer holding people responsible for their own stupidity, as is evidenced by the ridiculous litigation that clogs our judicial system. Perhaps a little chlorine in the gene pool is not such a bad thing 8o Anyone with reasonable intelligence can figure out that you don't build a boat and imediately paddle to Cuba if you couldn't get the elephant shaped lamp to turn on when you pulled down on its trunk in your junior high school woodshop class.

It sounds like the pictures were high quality (coffee table book), which is something that many books lack. I can look at a bundle of pictures, a set of plans, and basic instruction and go from there. By the time I build, I'll probably know too much!

Now I can't wait to get my copy so I can see if it is worth a damn.

> Nick's book on kayak construction is for the coffee table not
> the shop.

> Included in the problems with the book are

> 1) There is no construction engineering philosophy presented.
> Example: One takes 1/4" wood strips planes and sands then to
> some unknown thinness. This unknown thickness of wood is expected
> to support the unspecified design loads.

> 2) There is no testing philosophy presented. Example: Of the
> best cloth/epoxy shops only a few can consistently produce work with
> less than a 40% variation in strength. They do it by removing variability
> from their materials and processes. With the many sources of fabric
> and epoxy and with the different techniques and shop conditions used
> the variation of strength between home builders and Nick must be more.
> Yet Nick gives no test(s) to determine if your construction or even
> his meets any standard.

> 3) There are no warnings of probable catastrophic failures. Examples:
> Both the glue/wood bond and the epoxy/wood bond fail if they get wet
> as in after minor hull damage - the boat falls apart. Epoxy/aluminum
> bonds (as in foot braces) fail after a period of time measured in
> months due to normal exposure to moisture - the foot braces fall off
> facing the paddler with a loss of control.

> Given Nick's background in engineering he should have done better.
>