Skin on frame canoes and kayaks by Platt Monfort

Platt Monfort's Geodesic Airolite boats are skin on frame canoes, kayaks and small rowing boats that weigh a fraction of a plywood or strip-built hull. A SnowShoe 12 solo canoe comes out under 20 lb. The method came out of an ultralight aircraft project: a frame of thin wooden stringers and ribs is braced diagonally with Kevlar roving, which gives it the stiffness of a geodesic structure, and the whole thing is covered in Dacron aircraft fabric that is shrunk tight with an iron and sealed.

Monfort finished the drawings for the SnowShoe 12 in 1982 and spent the next two decades stretching and reshaping that hull into the range below, from an 8 ft pack canoe to an 18 ft tandem. He described the work as closer to building a model aeroplane than a boat, and most of these designs are a good first project: no lofting, no steam box, no epoxy, and the frame fits through a doorway.

Plans are sold as full-size patterns through Geodesic Airolite Boats, which carried on after Monfort's death. Every design here links to its plans page, and anyone building one can keep the log on this site so the next builder knows what the hours and the fabric really came to.