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Welcome to STANLEY SmallCraft

Build your own dinghy or canoe for your holiday or as a spare time family activity.

Start now and working just at weekends you can be on the water in a few weeks after receiving your plans.*

It takes just a few hours work a day to complete a dinghy or canoe in 1 to 5 weeks with our DIY plans or kits.

*Depending on design and build method. 

Page Links
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DIY Plans
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Peasemarsh 8 Canoe

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Winchelsea 10 Dinghy

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Winchelsea 2.2 Dinghy

 

   Build your own boat.   

 

Build a small boat from our detailed

DIY Plans - Digital, Standard or with full size patterns

or our custom DIY Plywood Canoe & Dinghy Kits for any of our designs.​

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Rother 2.5 Mini Gaffer

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Rye Bay 228 Dinghy

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Peasemarsh 14 Canoe

*** Although we don't expect you to, if you experience any problems on our site, please let us know. Thank you. ***
DIY Plans

You can build a boat from our DIY Plans

There are no special tools, hard to find materials or complicated joints involved with building our boats so, why not build a small boat and explore the inland waters of the UK, or anywhere when the weather improves again.

t's not as difficult as you might think. Our boats are designed to be as easy as possible to build. Plus, we are always on hand to answer your questions if you need it.

 

Our Dinghy & Canoe plans come in three different types

 

Digital Download Plans from £10.00

Printed A3 Workshop Plans from £20.00

Full Size Patterns* with Build Plans from £30.00

*Not all designs available as full size patterns packages

 

All of them come with a materials list, full step by step instructions and advice on plywood types, wood and epoxy.

The designer of our boats started STANLEY SmallCraft in 1990 developing his own designs and he built each one.

We only sell plans we've selected from his tried and tested designs with many sold over the years.

Building your own boat is not as difficult as you might think. With our plans there are no special tools required or difficult joints to cut. We use a simple method to get the component parts dimensions laid out on the plywood sheet(s) and, if you get stuck, we will help you through it with our free email/text/phone help if you need it.

Any questions? - Contact us stanleysmallcraft@gmail.com

Rye Bay dinghy launched
Go to Stitch & Tape Plans

Rye Bay 228

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Winchelsea 10

Go to Clinker Ply Plans
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Peasemarsh 8

Go to Canoe Plans
DIY Kits
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Peasemarsh Basic  Kit - Hull Parts

Or Build Your Boat from one of our
FULL PLYWOOD & EPOXY KITS
Or
Plywood Only kits
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Dengemarsh Canoe Kit in build

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Dengemarsh Canoe Kit in ready to launch

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Karun Pram 8 Kit in build

Custom DIY Dinghy and Canoe Kits

If you want to go rowing, motoring, sailing, fishing, maybe a tender for a bigger boat or just pottering about on the water in a small boat, we have may have a design for you.

 

Choose a design, discuss with us what you want in your kit and we will price it up for you with all current discounts.

Then we'll cut all the plywood hull parts on our CNC machine for accuracy and we only use a high quality Okoume/Gaboon BS1088 Lloyds registered marine plywood or a quality.

 

All required stitch holes etc drilled so that your kit arrives ready for assembly with the epoxy resin materials supplied. A simple but strong plank butt joint system is used to keep things easy.

The Full Kits include all the epoxy materials of your brand choice, trim, hatches, yoke, seats, etc as you require to build the complete dinghy or canoe ready for painting and launching.

Or, you can now opt for the Plywood Only pack*. It is just the plywood panels CNC cut with stitch holes etc drilled if required.

(*Plywood Only - all plywood parts cut from a cheaper marine plywood.

No wood or epoxy resin materials supplied).

The cheaper ply is not suitable for some dinghy designs but is for most canoe designs.

Spend some quality time building a boat as your own or a family project. It is enjoyable and you have something to enjoy on the water when it's finished.

Full build instruction manuals are included.

Our kits have been developed and udated over the years from the originals first produced in 1993.

You can now pay for your kit in 3 interest free instalments.

(Under £1000)

All our designs can be cut as kits.

Free Delivery to UK Mainland only.

Highlands & Islands add further £48.00

Any questions? - Contact us stanleysmallcraft@gmail.com

Go to Premier Dinghy Kits
Paul's

Not only did Paul design all the little boats on this website, he also designed many other things too.

In Paul's Boatshed you will find some of those things such as his boat shaped shelf units and wine storage units and other small items made from the recycled wood left over from our kit and build projects, all made by hand and finished to order.

These unique shelf units, 12", 24", 34" and 44" high, with or without multi coloured lighting strip to provide back lighting, Boat shaped wine or drinks station 24" or 34" high, garden/home display ornaments, kids boat rockers and other miscellaneous items. These can be personalised too with laser engraved names or slogans.

 

Have a look at these and other items - Boat shaped items

Any questions? - Contact us stanleysmallcraft@gmail.com

Shipping to UK only.

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44" Basic Shelf Unit

44"Dinghy Shaped Shelf Unit

 New Style Shelf Unit
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The new units are availble in 3 sizes and 3 different door cutouts.

More information here.

Any questions? - Contact us stanleysmallcraft@gmail.com

Plus many Other Items
We have a range of other items Paul designed, nautical or not, some that can be personalised, from knot boards and snack trays to boat rockers and wooden chests.
This range will grow as we learn to build them.

 
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34" and 44" Garden/House ornament boat. Also available as a rocking boat.

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Boat Rocker

44" Boat Rocker

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Calendar

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Snack Trays/Lazy Susans

Birch
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We are no longer running our own boat building courses but we are working with Birchcanoes based in Brooksby, Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire. They offer our designs or their own for you to build and accomodation too at a lovely riverside location where you can test out your work.

Click the link above for more information.

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CNC

CNC Cutting Service

Plywood, MDF, Plastic, Acrylic, Aluminium*

 

We are now able to offer a CNC sheet cutting service.

If you have a craft project or even your own boat design or somewhere in between, anything you have been working on and want the components cut etc. we might be able to help.

 

From basic sketches to CAD drawings, we could turn your ideas into reality from just £25.

More details can be found here.

 

Contact us to discuss your project.

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Rye Bay 228

Winchelsea 2.2 built on a workshop course

Winchelsea 2.2

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Peasemarsh Canoe

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Peasemarsh 8 Canoe

 

A short history of STANLEY SmallCraft.

I have been around boats most of my life and started designing my own boats while still at boarding school in 1975. I soon had a small, basic portfolio of around twenty plank on frame designs based on the small boats I'd seen locally in Rye in the holidays while also helping and learning to build and repair boats. I built my first boat from an Edson I. Shock design, a simple pram dinghy and the first of my own designs came soon after, a 12' sailing dinghy, which was a great success. 

STANLEY SmallCraft was started in 1990 designing and restoring small boats. I now have a portfolio of over 240 designs and some of those became our stock designs for the plans, kits and complete boats we have on offer from this website.

We have built all of our stock boats at least twice, most of them many times but they have all been built many times by our DIY builders - except the Ryemarsh which has only been built twice by us, once on a boatbuilding course and only five have been DIY built.

DIY Dinghy Building Plans & DIY Canoe Building Plans, DIY Plywood Dinghy & Canoe Kits.

Build it yourself with our plans or kits.

 

STANLEY SmallCraft

Unit A, Lammas Courtyard

Lammas Road

Corby

Northamptonshire

NN17 5EZ

England,

United Kingdom

stanleysmallcraft@gmail.com

 

 

 

 

 

PRIVACY NOTICE

This website does not collect or store any personal data.

If you order from us, we use a secure third party who collects the necessary order details and processes the payment.

If you contact us we will use your contact details for as long as required to answer questions etc. then delete them.

We will never keep or pass on your details to a third party unless required to do so by law and will notify you first.

 If you want us to keep your details longer than the time necessary to complete a transaction, you must request it. 

 

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