- The first thing you need to do when building a wooden boat is to choose a good design. If you are building your first boat, simplicity and a low budget should be two of your main concerns. There is no need to get into a complex project with a high overhead when you are just learning. The best boat to start with is a single board boat. These boats use one sheet of plywood to make, are inexpensive, and are not too hard to construct. You can make several designs, such as the simbo, a punt, a sampan, even a one-sheet canoe. Most of these require nothing more than a saw, epoxy glue, a plywood sheet, and gunwale battens.
- You'll use plywood for most simple DIY boat constructions. Plywood is several thin sheets of timber glued together to make a single board. The visible layers of the plywood, the quality of what you see, are called the faces. Faces are graded according to quality and appearance, and choosing the right faces can give your wood boat a particular look. The grade of the plywood is also important, as this determines the strength of the boards, and how well they will stand up to water. Exterior grade ply and marine ply are the accepted ply grades for boat-building. Mahogany boards, hoop pine and Pacific maple are good woods to use for boat-building.
- When you have cut your boards to the plans you are using, join the sheets together. Most boat plans require that you buy 8-foot-by-4-foot sheets, cut them, then join them using one of two methods; the butt joint and the scarf joint. A butt joint is the simpler of the two methods, requiring you to spread liquid epoxy on the edges of the two sheets you are putting together, then gluing a strip of ply to one or both sides of the joining seam. If you are gluing your boards together, make sure you do not drop glue on your board. Epoxy will not stick to polyethylene, or plastic, so it is a good idea to lay down a sheet of plastic lining before gluing your joints together.
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