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Q: What is Taped Seam Plywood construction?

drawing of taped seam or stitch and glue joints

A:   Taped seam construction is a "cheap and cheerful" boat building method that spontaneously arose around the world during the 50's and 60's in Sweden, England, Australia, New Zealand, America and probably elsewhere. Other names for the process are "tack and tape" or "stitch and glue". People looked at rigid plywood sheets and moldable fiberglass cloth and said "Say, I could glue the panels together with glass, why not give it a try?" Some of the early boats were: Jim Brown's trimarans, the English Mirror Dinghy sailing pram, Southern Californian hydroplanes and Phil Bolger's Yellow Leaf canoe. My father made a cartop luggage carrier with taped-seam plywood in 1959.

    Taped-seam plywood boats are easy to build. (Phil Bolger called the method "the incompetent's delight"-no offense intended.) They are easy to repair and stronger than boats with a traditional chine log joint. I have been building taped-seam boats since 1976 and not one boat has been returned for repairs to the glass joints. Two of the boats have been hit hard enough to break the plywood but the glass joints held on and saved the boats. So even though this boat is easy to build don't think that it is weak or of low quality.

    You don't need a building jig or molds to make these boats. Simply lay out the computer generated plank shapes from our plans onto the plywood and cut out the panels. Stitch them together with loops of copper wire, twisted tight with a pair of pliers. Insert a few cross braces and you have created the shape of the boat. Apply a fillet of thickened epoxy and a layer of fiberglass tape to the inside joint. When the resin sets turn the hull over and cut off the wires. Round over the outside of the chine, apply a layer of fiberglass tape and the bare hull is done. It is a simple job of carpentry to install the seats, gunwales and other lumber parts.

    Taped seam plywood is an excellent method of boat building for the home boatbuilder. Thousands of people have built boats this way, you can too.

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© John McCallum 2001.