Living amidst many inland lakes and rivers, and near the north shore of Lake Michigan has turned me into a boatbuilder. It took a while to commit to building a boat, but in the winter of 2015 my wife, Sue, and I decided I needed an interesting snow-season project. I looked online for an easy-to-build rowboat that we could use for exploring local lakes and rivers, and perhaps some camp-cruising. I came across Dave Gentry’s Chamberlain Gunning Dory and was intrigued by its skin-on-frame construction and beautiful sweeping lines. I checked with Dave, and he agreed that the design should suit us well, so I ordered the plans.The original Chamberlain gunning dory was built by William Henry Chamberlain of Marblehead, Massachusetts, around 1900. The type was popular for waterfowl hunting along the shoreline north of Boston. John Gardner took the lines off Chamberlain’s own dory in 1942 and presented his interpretation of the boat in The Dory Book and in Building Classic Small Craft, Volume 1. Gardner’s drawings were the basis of the Gentry skin-on-frame version of the boat.Dave’s plan set includes a 28-page comprehensive, illustrated manual and a sheet of templates for the frames and stems. The plans are available as either full-sized printed drawings or digital PDF files for printing locally. The manual is excellent. It starts by describing the tools and materials needed for the project and then clearly explains each step of the building process. Throughout, it gives acceptable alternatives to the recommended materials. For example, we substituted locally available clear radiata pine in place of cypress for the keel, gunwales, and chines. The one “unauthorized” substitution we made was marine-grade Douglas-fir plywood for the frames because we didn’t have a nearby source of okoume or meranti BS1088 plywood. I have no doubt that the build would have gone more quickly, and the boat would be somewhat lighter, if we had used the better marine plywood.

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