Anyone who’s been around boatbuilding and boat design knows there have been enormous changes in the past 75 years—from plank-on-frame wooden boats, to manufactured plywood hulls, to the mid-1950’s revolution when professional builders switched from wood to fiberglass production and never looked back.
Twenty years after the advent of fiberglass-boat production, many of us took part in the now-fabled Wooden Boat Revival of the mid-1970s, when WoodenBoat magazine published its inaugural issues, the first wooden-boat festivals were organized coast to coast, and we witnessed a fresh surge of interest in homebuilt wooden boats.
About that time, young Sam Devlin was a tugboat deckhand in Alaska, seeking a way into the marine trades. When a crewmate loaned him a copy of the first-ever edition of WoodenBoat, Sam had one of those life-changing realizations: People in this magazine are actually living their dreams—designing and building beautiful wooden boats. And maybe, just maybe, I could do that!
That’s exactly what Sam did upon return to the Lower 48…and the rest is history. (And speaking of the history of Devlin Designing Boatbuilders, Sam offers 123 boat plans for homebuilders, ranging in length from 6.5’ to 54.’ His company has sold plans to customers in 114 countries, and the most popular DIY plan is for the little Polliwog dinghy, whose YouTube building video has had more than 1.5 million views (!) Sam’s classic Surf Scoter—one of my personal favorites—has also been popular with four distinct models from 22 to 26 feet. In terms of CNC-cut kits, the outstanding Candlefish 16 outboard skiff has been a standout. Sam is currently working on three variations to the Candlefish design, hoping to further extend the boat’s appeal.)
Knowing from the start that marine plywood was a terrific building material, Sam developed his own approach to the new building method called stitch-and-glue, which involved cutting hull panels to shape, wiring them together temporarily while “tack-welding” with thickened epoxy resin, then pulling the wires, and more permanently bonding the hull planks, bulkheads and other parts together with a thick, peanut-buttery goop we came to call fillets. After that, most stitch-and-glue hulls were then skinned with fiberglass cloth—sometimes just outside, often in and out—forming a light but strong hull without the need for many traditional frames or other weighty components.
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