Build Log Index

The Build Diaries: Skin-on-Frame CRAFT

Build Logs

Every boat starts as a drawing. A set of assumptions about how wood will behave, how a hull will move through water, how a lashing will hold under load. The drawing is a hypothesis. The build is where it gets tested.

My process runs from the macro design outward — the overall form first, then the details resolved as the build progresses and the boat begins to have opinions of its own. Things that looked right on paper turn out to be wrong in timber. Decisions that seemed straightforward at the drawing board reveal complications that only a half-built hull can show you. These logs document that process honestly — not the clean version, but the one where the design gets revised because reality required it.

Once the frame is built and skinned, it goes in the water. The sea trials are not a formality. They are the final stage of design — the point at which the boat tells you what it actually is rather than what you intended it to be. If it passes that test, I draw it up properly and release the plans.

The construction throughout is skin on frame — lightweight timber framing, natural materials, hand tools, no synthetic resins. These methods prioritise mechanical simplicity and repairability over production efficiency. A boat built this way can be understood completely by the person sailing it, fixed with materials carried aboard, and composted at the end of its life.

What these logs are for: builders who want to understand not just what decisions were made but why, and what happened when the theory met the wood.

Sam

2026. VAKA.