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Popular Mechanics 23 Boats You Can Build 1950

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Welcome to the Wonderful World of Weekenders!

The Weekender has been our most popular boat design for many years, and we understand why: It has a Classic Style, based loosely on the amazginly pretty Friendship Sloops of New England, and the Weekender is a perfect size for "simply messing about in boats"! It's small enough to be easy to handle, to build, and to store, yet it's still roomy enough to stay overnight in (or just take a nap on a nice afternoon in your driveway, as we've done more than a few times!)

Over Forty Years ago we first brought out this design amnd it has remained one of our most popular boats — And we quite agree with our builders: It's our favorite, too!

Read On to learn more about this Amazing Boat!

NOW AVAILABLE AS DIGITAL PLANS and VIDEO!!

For many years people have been asking us to bring out a digital version of the Weekender plans for download. Well, the Weekender plans have just been completely gone through (updated drawings, new Plans Addenda for improvements, and new additions to the text!) and we are now offering Immediate Digital Download of the plans!

AND...We Now Have the whole of the 3 1/2-hour Weekender Home Boatbuilding Course available as downloadable or streaming video!

Just as the plans needed to move to a more modern format, so too did the Weekender Boatbuilding Video. We shifted forward from VHS tapes to DVDs, and now on to online video files which you can stream or download to a tablet or laptop for use in the workshop!

Order the Weekender Plans, the Video Series, or BOTH below, and scroll down this page to learn LOTS more about the Weekender!

The Weekender in Small Boats Magazine!

Read the article they published about our weekender design.

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23 boats you can build – popular mechanics.

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Build a classic!

This 180 page book includes 23 plans for building a classic boat, compiled by the editors of Popular Mechanics in 1950.

Plans include:

• "Su-Lu"-the PT-Type Plywood Dinghy
• Trio in Plywood
• "Seacraft" -a 25-Foot Cabin Cruiser
• Boats for Sportsmen
• "Zephyr"-l4-Foot Sailing Dinghy
• "Arrowhead"-21-foot Sloop
• "Just for fun" Craft
• Training "Ships" for Young Sailors
• Build Your Boat Right
• Seamanship and Servicing Your Boat

File size: 23mb PDF in 3 separate files of 8mb each.

23 boats you can build compiled by the editors of Popular mechanics magazine.

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23 classic wooden boat designs from the editors of Popular Mechanics include layouts and instructions for sailboats, canoes, fishing boats and power boats. You'll find ingenious solutions to many boating problems as well, with advice on temporary sail rigs, sail repair, transporting small boats to the water, and outboard engine maintenance.

Previews available in: English

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A Tale of Two Boats

Building the PM-38 once as a teen and again 50 years later

From Issue   November 2021

I t was the fall of 1962, and I had just started my junior year of high school. I subscribed to Popular Mechanics magazine and was always excited when each new monthly issue showed up in my mailbox, since it contained all kinds of stuff that was interesting to this 16-year-old technically oriented guy. The cover of the August 1962 issue pictured “The Supersonic Helicopter of the Future” (well, that didn’t happen) and teaser—“Build a 38 m.p.h. Fun-Boat—for $38.”

The August 1962 issue of Popular Mechanics had 202 pages for just 35 cents. The top billing went to new cars and highlighted the ’63 Studebaker Avanti.

I immediately turned straight to page 140 and read the article. It described how to build a neat little 13′9″ outboard runabout, a PM-38. The “PM” was for Popular Mechanics and the “38” came from a boat speed of 38 mph, a materials cost of $38, and a build time of 38 hours. “Hey,” I thought, “I can do that!” I showed it to my dad, and he said that if I could build the hull, he would find an engine for it.

The article on the PM-38 packed a lot of information, drawings, and photographs into 7-1/2 pages.

Our home in the Sunset District on the west side of San Francisco had a two-car garage, but we had just one car, so I had space to build the hull. My grandfather Kelly had a construction business and much of the framing material came from his scrap pile; I saved my allowance of $3 per week to buy other materials and plywood, saving some money by Pa Kelly using his contractor’s discount for the Douglas-fir exterior-grade plywood used for the hull planking. I don’t know how much I spent, but it was likely less than $38.

Most every weeknight after dinner and homework, I would go down into the garage and spend an hour or two working on the boat. Not much got done on the weekends—Friday was “date night.” Dad didn’t help much with the construction. Although he was a very competent woodworker, he felt that this was my project and believed I would learn more by making mistakes and figuring out how to fix them. More than once, I had the unfortunate “measure once, cut twice” experience. Once or twice each week, Dad would look over my work, and explain what I was doing right, and point out where I could do better. Occasionally, my friends would drop by to see what I was up to; they were always amazed that I would even try to build a boat.

For the previous two summers, I had worked as an apprentice carpenter in my grandfather’s construction company, so woodworking was not completely new to me, but building the boat was a real stretch of my skills. I built it on a pair of sawhorses, instead of the two A-frame supports called for, and used secondhand power tools: an old 1/4″ single-speed drill, a beat-up circular saw that Pa Kelly had given up on, and a tiny jigsaw of my dad’s. I bought a carpenter’s framing square, a decent rasp, and a block plane.

The forward ends of the plywood bottom panels required steaming to bend and twist them into place. I borrowed my new stepmom Mildred’s steam iron for this task and managed to burn it out. She and my dad had been married less than six months, and she was not impressed.

There were nearly 400 screws in the boat, all driven in by hand. The magazine article called for caulk on all the joints below the waterline, and Weldwood waterproof glue elsewhere, but my dad suggested that I should use the glue for all the joints. Weldwood Plastic Resin Glue, a urea-formaldehyde formula, is nasty stuff. It’s a brown powder that, when mixed with water, turns dark, and has the stinging, eye-watering smell of formaldehyde. Unless just the right amount of water is mixed in with the powder and the joints are gap-free and put under a lot of clamping pressure, it won’t have any strength at all. At the right consistency it’s a sticky mess and gets all over everything. The only thing that was worse was Dad’s suggestion to fiberglass the hull. He did spring for the fiberglass cloth, resin, and catalyst, but he left the messy job of sheathing the hull to me. The polyester resin in common use then was “aromatic” to put it mildly, and everything in the house soon absorbed the smell of the resin. Again, my poor new stepmom was not impressed. I knew she was irritated by the situation, but she never made a big deal out of it. She knew that the project was important to me and was always supportive. She was an exceptional person, a great stepmother, and we eventually became very close.

I have very few photos of my first PM-38, TERRY’S FERRY. I’d give a lot if I had a picture or two with the boat in the water, but they just don’t exist. Back then, in 1963, I didn’t have a camera, and my folks weren’t much into photography. That’s 16-year-old me at the helm. In this picture the lack of any paint on the interior is clearly evident.

Dad found a used 1959, 40-hp Elgin outboard motor in the boat department of the Sears store on Geary Street in San Francisco. Yes, our local Sears and Roebuck store did actually have a boat department. Elgin, the Sears in-house brand, was made by Scott-Atwater and would provide plenty of power. The Popular Mechanics PM-38 pictured in the magazine was powered by a 28-hp Johnson and could do 38 mph; and the boat was rated to take up to a 45-hp motor.

These shots were taken in the driveway of our house, likely the day Dad and I loaded the boat onto the trailer and mounted the Elgin outboard.

It took me eight months to build the boat, working around six hours per week on it. The math says I spent somewhere around 180 to 200 hours total. I don’t think it could be built in 38 hours.

My stepmom and my dad were impressed by what I had built and were proud to pose with the boat.

I finished the PM-38 in April 1963. We named it TERRY’S FERRY. After school on Friday, May 3, 1963, my best high school friends—Bill and Dave —and I towed the boat with my grandfather’s F-100 pickup to Lake Berryessa, a 15-mile-long reservoir in Napa County, about 75 miles north of San Francisco. We set up a tent in the campsite at the Berryessa Marina. It rained all that night; our campsite was a muddy mess. It was chilly the next morning, but the sun came out, we launched the boat without much fanfare, and all three of us piled into the boat and motored away from the dock. The first thing that happened was the propeller shear pin failed, and I had to get into the water to replace it. (Fortunately, I always bring a tool kit the first time out.) The hull was watertight, but in a tight turn, water just poured in through the hull-to-deck joint. On top of that, the old cable-and-reel steering system was wasn’t working properly. I muttered something like, “Well, what else could go wrong?” and leaned back; the helm seat snapped loose from the bottom and I tumbled into the back of the cockpit. In spite of all the problems, we all did get water-skiing that day—I conned the boat while kneeling on a flotation cushion.

Popular Mechanics did not lie about the boat’s performance: it was indeed fun and fast. The boat would show its transom to most anything; it would flat-out fly. It was a great ski boat, hardly any wake, although a good slalom skier—like my buddy Dave—could get the boat to fishtail a little when he made a tight cut.

I finished the hull with white oil-based house paint scavenged from Pa Kelly’s scrap pile. I had varnished the deck but it was made from interior-grade mahogany plywood and deteriorated quickly. After two summers, I ’glassed the deck and repainted the whole boat with pencil-yellow marine enamel. I also replaced the original bucket seats with a back-to-back bench, upholstered with slick black Naugahyde. Big mistake—the black seats got really hot in the California summer sun!

We did not have a good experience with the Elgin outboard. About every second or third outing, something went wrong. Scott-Atwater outboards have a reputation for being great runners when they run, but they are finicky. The Elgin 40 was a two-cylinder engine with twin carburetors, and the carb floats would often stick, and then the engine would simply refuse to start. I got into the habit of picking up the trailer tongue and dropping it on the ground prior to taking the boat out—this would sometimes unstick the carb floats. In the spring of 1965, my dad and I took the boat fishing on San Francisco Bay, and on the way back to the launch ramp, the engine suddenly developed a rattle like a handful of bolts being shaken inside a coffee can. The engine got us home, but in the garage, we took it apart and found the crankshaft had broken. Fortunately, the break was oblique and inside one of the engine’s main bearings so the shaft could still deliver power to the propeller. To its credit, the engine hobbled along and got us to shore that day, but it was a goner.

Not long after the Elgin died, I passed by a small boatshop in our neighborhood and noticed a used 1960 Johnson 40-hp Sea-Horse in the front window. I went in and inquired about the price: $200. I was then a freshman engineering student, but I had a part-time job that paid $100 a month and, to my amazement, they let me purchase it on credit—$20 down and then $16 a month for 12 months. The Johnson, unlike the Elgin, was bulletproof. It powered TERRY’S FERRY for the next eight years, and two subsequent boats, until I turned it in on the purchase of an Evinrude 75-hp engine on my first “real boat”—that is, one that I didn’t build myself—in 1982.

All through a five-year courtship with Antoinette, my college girlfriend, we often took the boat water-skiing at Lake Berryessa. Summer days with a hot boat and a pretty young woman in a red and white polka-dot bikini sitting next to you—well, if that doesn’t make you a happy guy, I don’t know what will.

In late August 1965, Bill, Dave, John, and I—inseparable friends from high school—got together for a day on the lake before heading back to our separate colleges for our sophomore years. By that time, Antoinette and I had been dating for 15 months, and were starting to get pretty serious and would eventually get married. Bill brought this cute redhead he had been dating for a month—they would get married three years later. John brought Rosie, a classmate whom we all knew. Dave didn’t bring a date, but he brought beer even though we were all 19 and below the legal drinking age.

It took three trips out to a small island near the marina with the people and gear: beach chairs, a couple of ice chests, a grill, and charcoal, not to mention the skis and ropes, and towels and the like. We set up our little day-camp site near the shore under oak trees for some shade. Four people was the most the boat could seat, so we used the campsite as a base while we water-skied with just the driver and observer aboard. We got all the girls up on two skis. Dave tried to teach me to do a “beach snatch”—getting up on a single water ski from the beach without getting wet. I just couldn’t get the hang of it—I either got the tow handle pulled out of my hands or did a face plant into the water. We barbecued hamburgers and hot dogs, ate Antoinette’s chocolate chip cookies, and drank Dave’s Colorado Kool-Aid (that’s Coors beer for the uninitiated).

It was a Sunday afternoon, and we had intended to pack up and head home around 4, but we were all having such a great time that we lost track of time. Around 6:30 or 7, sunburned, tired and happy, we realized that we needed to get going. Instead of the three trips that we took to get to our campsite, we ended up with all seven of us and all the gear in the little boat heading back to the marina. I was at the helm, all the equipment was in the cockpit, the gals were sitting on the side decks with their legs inside the boat, and the guys were sitting on the front deck. Maybe the boat had 6″ of freeboard. There was no way even the Johnson 40-horse could get the PM-38 on plane, and even if it could have, it would not have been safe with the boat so terribly overloaded! It wasn’t far, mostly inside the 5 mph “no wake” zone anyway, and we made it back to shore safely. We loaded the boat on the trailer, all hugged, said our goodbyes, and promised each other we would do it again next year. But by the next August the war in Vietnam would raise its ugly head. Bill and Dave, who were in the Navy reserve, would be called up to active duty, and I was in USAF Officer Candidate School. While my buddies and I remained lifelong friends, that was the last time the four of us would be together. It was one of my best boating days, ever.

By the summer of 1971, the PM-38 had seen the last of its good days. The inexpensive materials used in construction and the lack of paint on the interior led to framework decaying, particularly around the transom. It was also starting to leak badly. Antoinette was pregnant with our first child, so the boat didn’t get used much that summer. After eight years, its time was almost up, but it had been a great little boat, worth every bit of $38, and every hour it took to build.

In May of 1972, I had nearly completed ORANGE CRATE– a Glen-L Rebel that was the PM-38’s replacement. My college lab partner, Ron, and I moved the PM-38 hull from my trailer onto his new trailer, and the Rebel off its building form and onto my trailer. Then we mounted my “bulletproof” Johnson 40 hp Sea-Horse on the transom of the new boat. Right after this, Ron and I took out a circular saw and cut the back end off the PM-38 hull. I don’t recall that Ron ever renamed the boat. The car in the garage is my 1956 Chevrolet Bel Air sports coupe. It was my car during my undergraduate college years, and I used it to tow TERRY’S FERRY for most of the boat’s life. After it cracked a piston, I had every intention of tearing down the engine, but life got in the way. When we moved to San Jose in ’73 I sold the car, not running. Big mistake—that car would be worth big bucks today!

Over the winter of 1971–72, I built another, bigger, ski boat—a Glen-L Rebel—to replace the PM-38. When the Rebel was near completion, I asked a college friend to help me put the new boat on the trailer, mount the engine, and take the old PM-38 to the landfill. Ron agreed to help, but then asked if he could have the boat instead of dumping it. “Sure,” I said. He bought a trailer and engine (a 40-hp Merc) and we used a circular saw to cut the back 6” off the boat to get rid of the worst of the rot. We fabricated and installed a new transom and put a new layer of fiberglass tape and resin on all the seams. Ron used the boat for another three summers. The last time he used the boat he was running it at speed when the joint between the front and rear bottom panels failed, and half the bottom peeled off. The boat sank like a stone. Ron and his wife were both wearing life jackets and were quickly picked up by a passing boat, and everyone was okay. As far as I know, my PM-38 is still at the bottom of Lake Mendocino.

A half century and several other boats have passed since the good times with my PM-38. I follow a couple of wooden-boat and boatbuilding pages on Facebook, and one day the original 1962 Popular Mechanics article popped up along with a story about someone building a PM-38. It brought back all these great memories. Today, Antoinette and I have a genuinely nice 27′ express cruiser that we motor frequently on San Francisco Bay—and I need another boat like a hole in the head—but the post about the PM-38 got my attention. I didn’t intend to build it, but the retired mechanical engineer in me got thinking about what I would do differently if I did. My original intent was to maybe build a 1/12 scale model.

Alan Scott, the designer of the PM-38, had gone all-out to minimize the hull weight, as the 1962 article put it: “Since everyone knows that weight is one of the most important performance factors, our designer laid out plans for a fast planing hull and then hacked off weight wherever possible.” In doing so, I think he built in some structural weaknesses. The original design does not have a true sheer clamp: the deck and sides are joined on a 3/4″-square sheer rail screwed to the outside of the hull. That seam nearly always leaked, and frequently popped loose. Likewise, the spacing between the rearmost frame and the transom was nearly 4′, and the side decks became a little spongy over that span. Outboards have also changed, and a 20″ shaft is now the standard, rather than the 15″ shafts they had back then.

The possibilities for improvements became my checklist. I started with sketches and then some scale drawings. When I got to the point of lofting some full-sized patterns for the frames and other components on heavy paper, Antoinette said something like, “Go ahead and build it, you know you will be unhappy if you don’t, and you want to take the grandkids skiing, don’t you? Just make sure that my car will be in the garage every night when you are building it!”

I got serious about designing. To make the sheer-to-deck joint more robust, I added a breasthook, deepened the hull by 3″ to accommodate a 20″-shaft outboard, and notched the top of the frames for a 1-1/2″-square sheer clamp. To bridge the gap between the transom and the original rearmost frame, I drew in an additional frame 18″ forward of the transom and tied it into the transom knee. With the deeper hull it was possible to add a self-bailing motorwell, and I added a drain plug in the transom. After a day of water-skiing in the original, we would have to use a bucket and sponge to get all the water out of the bilge. I’ve gotten too old for that.

In March 2020 the boat was just about ready to plank. Here you can see many differences between my new version and the original—the framework was assembled on a stout building form on casters instead of scrap lumber A-frames, and the sheer rail and breasthook have been installed. The rear partial frame that I added is tough to see, but it’s there, connected to the transom knee.

These modifications only moderately increased the weight of the hull (from about 200 to perhaps 225 lbs) but made it far more structurally sound. The beam increased by almost 6″ and the length by 3″. When I ran these numbers through the formulas in the U.S. Coast Guard “Safety Standards for Backyard Boat Builders” I was pleasantly surprised to find that these seemingly minor changes would increase the recommended maximum load by nearly 500 lbs, and the maximum engine size from 45 to 60 hp.

I started construction in the fall of 2019. To meet Antoinette’s requirement that her car be safe in the garage at night, I built a stout, wooden construction frame on casters, so that I could roll the project outside and cover it with a tarp when I was not working on it. The boat turned out to be my COVID-19 “sanity project” during the lockdown.

I’m no longer a kid on an allowance, and money is not the issue it was for me in 1962; I used much better materials this time around. The framing is all kiln-dried clear straight-grained Douglas-fir, and the planking is BS1088 meranti marine plywood. Wood is still wood, but adhesives have greatly improved in 60 years. The entire boat was assembled with marine epoxy, with the screws all removed after the adhesive had set, since the epoxy alone provides the needed strength. The hull exterior is covered with fiberglass, and the entire interior is encapsulated in epoxy, to ensure that the wood remains dry and avoids the rot problems encountered in the original. This boat will likely outlive me.

My plan was to make the hull white with a mahogany deck, like the 1962 version, but when I got the hull planked, Antoinette looked at the meranti ply and said, “You aren’t going to paint that gorgeous wood, are you?” It was a lot more work preparing so much of the plywood to be finished bright. The results just scream the 1960s. The crowning touch would be a wraparound windshield similar to one from a ’57 Chevy—but I have not yet been able to find one.

Antoinette found some nice back-to-back pontoon-boat bucket seats online. I had to shorten them a bit, but they are serviceable and the brown and tan complement the hull’s finish. I also added floorboards to the interior, topped with faux-teak-decking carpet. The boat has running lights and full instrumentation, making it more complete (and legal) than the original.

TERRY’S FERRY did have a bow light on the front deck. I have no idea where it came from—I must have salvaged it from somewhere—it never was connected to a power source. A speedometer or tachometer would have cost far more than I could afford. In the second PM-38, I installed the tachometer and engine monitoring that came with the new Evinrude, a trim gage, and pitot-tube speedometer. Switches for the running and anchor lights are to the right of the wheel. The steering is a modern no-feedback rack-and-pinion system instead of the cable-reel-and-pulley type I used in the 1960s. The handrail on the dash makes it much easier for a passenger in the front seat to hang on in a turn.

The cost for the hull materials, not including the hardware, seats, and steering, came to about $900, which was substantially more than I spent on the original. I took the article’s Materials List from the original PM-38 and priced the lumber, plywood, fastenings, and adhesives on a home improvement store’s website to see what they would cost today. An inflation calculator says $338. The big-box store materials came to $450. I spent about 300 hours building the new PM-38, about 100 more than the first one. Most of the increase over the original was in the work to prepare the hull and interior for a bright finish: eight coats of spar varnish, wet-sanded to 2,000-grit. It was far from a 38-hour build but worth the effort

I was initially undecided about how to power the boat. A period engine would carry the vintage look from stem to stern, but in the end, I decided that I’m too old to fight with a temperamental 60-year-old motor, and new engines are far more ecofriendly. I found a new 40-hp Evinrude E-tec which fit the new motorwell and promised plenty of power. It weighs nearly 250 lbs, over 100 lbs more than my 1960 Johnson. The original engine had a rope-pull start, and the new one has an electric start that requires having a 50-lb battery aboard.

W e launched the boat for the first time in late April 2021. I considered towing the boat to the ramp with my classic ’69 Chevrolet Camaro, the car I bought new as my college graduation present to myself and used to tow my first PM-38 50 years ago, but decided on towing with my more powerful and less precious Chevy 4WD pickup. We poured some champagne on the bow and christened her RETRO-ROCKET. At the dock, the additional 200 lbs of weight of the engine and battery made the transom sit a little lower in the water than I would have liked. I was very glad I had added depth to the hull and its load-carrying capacity.

When I got my undergrad engineering degree, I treated myself to a brand-new 1969 Chevrolet Camaro. I put a trailer hitch on the Camaro, and it became my tow vehicle for the summers of ’69, ’70, and ’71. I’ve kept the Camaro stock and original, and it still looks and runs great. I couldn’t resist hooking up the new boat to the Camaro and driving it around the block.

There were several folks on the launch ramp, and they immediately started commenting on how nice the boat looked and asking what it was. “That’s a cool old boat, what year is it?” has been the most common question.

Tied up to the dock, the new PM-38 is overboard for the first time. Whenever we have it at the dock, it gets lots of attention. The accent stripe down the middle of the deck is unstained mahogany—I had to put the stripe in, because I wasn’t happy with the panel joints on the deck. I milled out the strip with my router and added the new piece. I was pleased with the result.

With just me aboard, the Evinrude brought the boat on plane nicely, but as the speed approached 30 mph it started to porpoise badly. I returned to the launch ramp and had Antoinette step aboard. While the porpoising was noticeably reduced with her aboard, I was not comfortable in pushing the boat any harder, and we called an end to the first sea trial.

I was shocked by how fast the boat is. Here, Antoinette and I are running flat out with the speedometer showing 46 mph. The USCG allowable power calculation shows that the boat would be approved with a 60-hp outboard. I can’t imagine how fast it would be with that power.

On the web I discovered that porpoising is a common problem with late-’50s and early-’60s boats repowered by modern outboards. I moved the battery forward to under the front deck, and added a set of automatic trim tabs; the combination both eliminated the porpoising problem and improved the at-rest trim. Like the original, the new PM-38 “runs like a racer’s dream,” just as the Popular Mechanics article had promised. The boat is scary-fast— with just Antoinette and me in the boat, the pitot-tube speedometer indicated 46 mph flat out! With four adults on board, she hit 40. At speed, with the engine trimmed out, the boat throws a spectacular “rooster tail.” I haven’t tried to pull up an adult water-skier yet, but my teenaged grandkids get popped right up!

My grandchildren were the raison d’être for the new PM-38. Here are three of my four grandkids with Moira, the eldest at the helm. Josh, to port in the back, was the most excited of the bunch, and was the first one we got up on skis.

The engine is trimmed way out, raising the bow, and we are about to do a screaming 180-degree turn with an impressive rooster tail while three mid-septuagenarian “kids” relive a day from a long time ago

Terry and Antoinette McIntyre live in the small town of Morgan Hill, California, 75 miles south of San Francisco. They have been married for 52 years and have two grown children and four teenaged grandchildren. Terry holds mechanical engineering degrees from San Francisco State University, the University of California and Stanford University, and is a licensed professional engineer in California. He retired from General Electric Power Systems in 2002 after a 33-year career as a research and development engineer and project manager, designing and building nuclear power plants. He has been a boater since 1960 when his father got involved with a group of co-workers who were boaters and waterskiing enthusiasts. Terry has owned seven boats over the past 60 years, four of which were homemade wooden boats. Terry and Antoinette boat primarily on San Francisco Bay in their 27′ power express cruiser, and are looking forward to using the new PM-38 runabout in the California Delta.

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What a great story and so much fun! You made all the right choices in doing your redesign of the original. I have seldom seen so much utility in a 14 foot motorboat. Really nice job to involve your grandkids and Delta sports.

What a fantastic story. Once again I got caught up in the excellent writing and read from start to finish. My teenage dream of becoming an Engineer was squelched by my high-school policy of males only in the drafting classes. I’m now 91 years and have precious memories of the four years I was the Assistant to the VP of Engineering in a food processing machine manufacturing plant. I had the privilege of overseeing 19 Engineers and draftsmen and writing the Service Manuals for the machines. Never an Engineer, but always a thinker and tinkerer. Congratulations Terry on the publication and recreation of your dream boat!

Wow, this takes me back to those heady days of the sixties, reading Popular Mechanics and dreaming of building boats. What a great story!!!

Wonderful story!

Having been the owner of a rowing pram at age 11, the itch of having a boat again has always stayed in me. Last year’s lockdown was the perfect excuse to start building a Wee Lassie canoe that has performed wonderfully, but the itching doesn’t end. Maybe I need a new project? Thanks for sharing your story, so engaging and well written. Nostalgia is a good motivation.

Terry, What a fabulous story. A brief glance brought me into a complete read. I noticed that you retired from the GE nuclear division. I am sure that you must have crossed paths with my father in law, Jack Williams. He was in the same division I suspect and stationed in your part of the world.

Boating is always in my blood. Helps to have an understanding wife who shares the experience. I should have been more discerning before I married. Anyhow, great story and great writing, Terry. Looking over some plans by Sam Devlin now.

Fantastic story! I grew up with a PM 38 in the family that my father built in ’63. Painted plywood, ‘glassed bottom and varnished interior, similar plastic wraparound windshield. Even our Tee Nee trailer looked similar to the one in your picture. Its first motor was also an Elgin and was ultimately replaced with ’64 Evinrude 28 HP Speeditwin. We all learned to waterski behind it, my dad included. That boat had a marvellous sliiiiiiiiiide/swish through turns at speed! The substantial flare of the hull sides certainly kept it from tripping on its chines. I don’t remember porpoising ever being an issue but it was prone to pounding hard on a choppy lake and large boat wakes could be quite the experience! Ultimately the family outgrew the boat and in 1974 it was replaced by a 67 Starcraft Jupiter that I still use today. I have many photos and the original magazine my dad built the PM 38 from and harbour thoughts of building one myself one day. It would be logical next step up from the Bolger row boat I did with my kids years ago. Funny enough I too am retired engineer…..I may have to connect somehow as your modernization certainly sounds like the way to go. Thanks for sharing your story and putting a smile on my face.

That was a beautiful article… my favorite ever

Wow, what memories you have unearthed for me! I too built a PM-38 in 1964 in our walk-out basement in upstate New York. I was 17 that spring and had no woodworking experience but followed the instructions to the letter. My Dad sprang for a 33 Johnson and wrap-around windshield. The boat got its biggest test on Kipawa Lake in southwestern Quebec. It survived that and lasted quite a few years. Dad loved scooting along flat out. There’s a picture of that somewhere. Thanks for the article and the link to happy times.

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Building the Popular Mechanics PM-38 from the August 1962 issue.

by Mark Reynolds (Harpers Ferry, West Virginia)

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Milton Thrasher : 73" A Class "Vanja" from Popular Mechanics plans of circa 1936

The Vanja designed by George Barons won the US A Class Championship in 1936. Plans were published by Popular Mechanics then and many models have been build from those plans. A fiberglass mold was made from one of the earliest models from which 4 hulls have been pulled. A Vanja fiberglass hull is available from Milton Thrasher. There is a link to more Vanja information including the articles on his web pages at http://www.angelfire.com/fl4/mft that gives full details. Posted by: Milton Thrasher - website: http://www.angelfire.com/fl4/mft

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The plans offered here are free public domain boat plans.

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Plans for Boats, oars and paddles. Many free plans

As I was looking through my boat plan links I realized that they were scattered here and there. I decided to compile the links all in one page to make it easier to navigate.

Email me if a link is broken. I try to update everything often but the internet is a fast paced place. (and I'm not so quick), I've also included free oar and paddle plans and books with plans in them.

I offer a few plans but most of these boat designs are links. I have not built most of these and cannot endorse them. Some plans are good, others not so much.

Many plans are now available, particularly those that offer hundreds of plans for very cheap, which are reprints from old Popular Mechanics and other magazine. The building methods are somewhat dated and the plans often not very detailed. Of more concern materials such as lead paint are sometimes recommended. Do your homework before building these. Often buying a good set of plans from a recognized designer will save you time and money in the end.

The following plan links may have duplicate because they may fit in different categories. A kayak plan might also be a free stitch and glue plan. Enjoy and go build a boat.

Links to All kinds of boat plans, oars, some free plans

• Miscellaneous Boat Plans many of them free. It's my largest plan page. Whenever I find a new plan I try and add it to this list.
• Motorboats Everything from simple skiffs to elaborate speedboats, classic wooden boats and fishing vessels.
• Dory Boat Plans Various plans some of which are free. Wide range of dory styles, usually characterized by a pointy front, relatively flat sides and toumbstone transom.
• Skiff Plans By skiff I mean a simple shaped pointy boat with a wide transom. Often used as a fishing boat. Capable of planing and carrying a motor.
• Strip Building Plans Often cedar strips are used. Often results in lovely rounded shapes with glorious wood finish. A favourite for canoes and kayaks but often seen in sailboats and multihulls.
• Ultra-Light Boat plans Imagine building a boat that weights less than 30 pounds and even less.
• Canoe and Kayak plans Many free plans included.
• Tenders Selection of boats suitable as tenders, some free. Many methods of building including stitch and glue, ultralight and strip building.

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• Free Skiff Plans Skiffs are fast easily built boats.
• Free Canoe and Kayak Plans There are some nice free designs out there. They vary in amount of detail offered.
• Free Stitch and Glue Plans Also plans that could be built using stitch and glue method.
• Free Rowboat Plans
• One Sheet Plans Boats can be built using only one sheet of plywood. Here are a few.

Free Canoe and Paddle Plans some links some actual plans

• Free Plans for Simple Oars by Spark Geissler Nice easy to build oars.
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• Free Paddle Plan From an old boy's book.

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I have a few free actual boat plans, some in pdf format.

These are mostly from old sources. Check before building.

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• Old Plan for Punt Actual plans, from old book. Substitute plywood for solid wood.
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I try to be accurate and check my information, but mistakes happen. ALSO keep in mind that not all free boats are good designs. Some are but others are worth exactly what you pay. Also keep in mind while I'm in a preachy mood, that a good set of plans will save you lots of time and if you've paid for them you can actually often contact the designer and get help.

The Model Shipwright

How to build first-class ship models from kits or from scratch using actual ship plans, free downloadable high-resolution ship plans, starting point for scratch-built ship model building.

All the the plans offered on The Model Shipwright  and The Model Shipwright blog are available on this site in high-resolution files. The images on the blog posting are linked directly to the page here with the downloadable files, or you can search from this page by ship type, ship name, or the historical period in which it was built. We put a lot of work in tracking down these plans, and in some cases digitized them ourselves and put in time cleaning up and repairing the images to make them more useful. Feel free to use them for your modeling projects, but please don’t just take them to repost on your site. We have digitally watermarked them to identify them as coming from this site.

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Ships whose primary purpose is warfare are cross referenced on this page, whether motor, sail, or oar-powered vessels

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14 comments

How detailed are your plans? Can you email me one page showing it?

You can download the plans directly from the website. Go to the page of plans you want, and left-click on the plan image to open the image file. Then right-click on the image and choose “save image as” to download it to your computer. The plans can be opened with any image-editing or preview software. Save it to a removable drive and you can take the drive to a local copy shop to be printed on their large-format printer.

Do you accept donated paper plans? I may thin out my collection.

Send us a message on our contact page, we’re always looking for submissions!

WAGB -10 or WAGB-11 Looking for plans. Can anyone help? Thx

I have a set of some 200+ plans for WAGB-10, what are you looking for?

I am looking for drawings of below main deck layouts of 1700-1800 “Man of War” ships. Do you have any?

Check out our page on the French Man of War Montebello It has several views of the below decks.

does anyone know where I could get plans for a VLCC oil tanker /?

I have some GA plans for some tankers, what are you looking for?

I am looking for the typical or average hull ratios: beam/lenght, beam/keel, beam/depth, beam/draught, tonnage, displacement, and burthen of the various types of Ships during the age of sail. Any recomendations?

One of the best experts on the subject was Howard Chapelle. He probably answers the question in one of his many books on sailing ships. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_I._Chapelle

[…] Ship Plans […]

Anyone know of a source for plans for the Steamer Eastland, that capsized in the Chicago River in 1915?

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10 Amazing Reader Builds From Popular Mechanics Plans

For more than a century, one of PM's staples has been publishing detailed project plans for our readers. But with the advent of the Web, readers could not only find our entire digitized archive online, but also post the results of their builds from PM plans to YouTube, Flickr or elsewhere. Here are some photos and videos of the best projects built with, or inspired by, plans from old issues of Popular Mechanics.

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Home » Are old, cheaper or free boat plans good value? 100 plans on CD?

Are old, cheaper or free boat plans good value? 100 plans on CD?

A question was asked about Hartley Designs – one of the great designers of the past.  The answer applies to the general discussion about what has changed in plans and designs over the last 50 years and some of the advantages of modern plans. It also covers some of the scammier content that appears as a bargain.

I also lament about the enquiries we get from people building from a 60 year old magazine article and how we are unable to help them much.

Richard Hartley’s work as an example of older plans Hartley was one of the great designers of his time. Many of his boats are perhaps not great masterpieces, but they are workmanlike (work as advertised) and his plans set a benchmark for many years.

My feeling too is that his TS16 (the first really popular trailer sailer) is the transition point for the performance of modern yachts. It was one of the very first well known cabin yachts with a hull drawn more from sailing dinghies, so it had sensational performance for the time and made a lot of boats that were to come later possible (Farr, Young, Davidson, Whiting). All these New Zealand Designers come from the same tradition, but Hartley was the first one to get commercial success for the concept

However that was 55 years ago.

David Payne’s work as an example of modern plans. I agree with much of the discussion about David Payne’s designs.

He is a great designer – nearly all his boats have a “rightness” about their appearance. and because he has a long small boat racing background they all work very well. He knows how to get performance without making the boats hard to sail.  His boats will end up being modern classics, as I hope do some of my own.

Real Designers vs Not so Real Designers and the “Download 400 free plans” for free guys

Hartley was definitely a real designer. As is David Payne.

But there are huge numbers of old boat plans from publications like Popular Mechanics that are just awful boats in every way.

Some good ones too, but so many stupid or awful boats. And you need to be a designer or very experienced boat user to know.

Heavy, too small rudders and centreboards, articles designed to make them look easy rather than make them easy to build.

Prime amongst these are the “hundreds of boat plans for free” for download or on a CD for a small fee. Just out of date magazine plans from 40, 60 or 80 years ago. Good luck if there is an important detail missing. The guy selling the plans is into internet sales rather than into boats. He or she won’t have a clue.

A neat update on the “100 plans on CD”. A guy attempted to spam my storer boat plans facebook group with ads for the CD. He had paid a fee to a franchiser promising income from selling the standard 100 boat plans CD. It was very clear he knew nothing at all about boats or boatbuilding (or internet marketing) or how to behave on someone else’s facebook group. None of that stopped the principle from taking his money. Even sadder that many of the plans on the CD are in the public domain available for free from svensons.com and others and you don’t need to buy (or sell) the “Boatplans on CD” or “My Boat Plans CD”. Most of the plans are already out there. But the discussion above and below on outdated plans remains true. See this discussion on Woodenboat forum with some additional sources.

A living designer is a nice resource. Or in Hartley’s case a living community of people who know the boats intimately.

On the other hand there are old designs from boating magazines like Rudder, Motor Yachting and others. Often by some of the greatest designers in history.

But there are significant construction details that have changed in 60 or 80 years that significantly reduce labour time and materials cost.

The Construction Differences – lighter/stronger

It is an interesting point to contrast designs from each designer – it shows some of the changes in technology over the intervening years.

The Hartley hulls are largely self supporting – there are enough ribs, floors, stringers, chinelogs, clamps and deckbeams to hold the boat’s skin rigidly.

However with David’s boats (and many modern designers – Kirby, Bolger, Oughtred, Holt and others) much of this additional timber; ribs, floors, deckbeams, stringers are eliminated with large savings in cost. The loads are carried by the interior fitout of the boat. There is a gridwork of support from all the furniture bonded directly to the hull.

For example the seat tops support the sides of the hull, the seat fronts support the bottom of the hull. The galley structure and berths all have these stiffening and strengthening effects providing a hugely strong network of parts.

In a Hartley the furniture can be left out almost entirely and the boats will still be strong enough – the furniture is not expected to make much of a contribution.

The difference is largely in the effectiveness of modern adhesives – notably epoxy. It allows any part of the boat to be effectively mechanically connected to adjacent parts in a structural way.

Reliable Glues – little need for nails and screws

Hartley relied on his current technology of glues that were not particularly gap filling which were backed up by lots of screws and nails.

As a boat repairer I have seen a lot of boats from this era with gaps where glue has let go. This doesn’t happen at all with epoxy.

See this article on how much things changed 30 or so years ago when epoxy started to be widespread for dinghy and catamaran construction

The modern designers don’t use many screws and nails – the glues are much more effective than fastenings by a long chalk – many of the modern boats may use fasteners to hold parts together while the glue sets up, but then are often removed.

For example fibreglass boats don’t use nails and screws – even where they use timber for bulkheads or furniture – it is simply fibreglass taped in place – and the modern epoxy timber boats are put together in the same way.

Plan Choice: So what to build?

Hartley has a huge range of plans with few gaps in sizing – if you want a 17ft half cabin outboard or inboard – Hartley has a plan for it or something very close.

It may be hard to find a more modern design with modern construction that fits in the same gap.

But wherever you can find a modern boat plan that is from one of the better of the modern designers (like the names above) it will have significant savings in timber cost and labour and also be much easier to build (eg you don’t need to notch everything in the interior to fit over all those ribs, floors and stringers for example).

2 thoughts on “Are old, cheaper or free boat plans good value? 100 plans on CD?”

I have a very cool hartley tahitian 13.73 m Called Toyboy SA 3780. She is 20 years old now. Fixing her up a bit and now very broke. I never got her plans when i bought her and now need it to get a servey done. Can someone please help me with plans?

Hi Lizette,

Hartley Boat Plans is very much in operation. If you send them an explanation of your problem and a photo of you boat they will probably be able to help you.

Best wishes Michael

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