Every boat should carry a boat hook within easy reach of the operator. If for no other reasons to save your oar blades from fending off rocks and concrete pilings, and to fish things out of the water without risking a dunking.
Simple to make, you can customize them to fit the space available on a specific boat and include handy features the storebought hooks don’t have.
Here a 6-foot boat hook is stacked atop a coopered 12-foot dock hook in its rack on the work boat dock.
A groove cut into the hook side of the shaft lets you know where the hook is in the dark.
Before finishing and painting, adjust the shaft diameter and shape so when tossed overboard, your boat hook floats upright for easy recovery. This 6-foot, bronze-head hook with 6/4 Douglas Fir shaft required no further trimming to float perfectly.
The hollow dock hook lives a hard life breaking ice and shuffling around heavy, rain-filled boats and scows for bailing. It was coopered from Doug Fir staves using birdsmouth joints cut on the tablesaw, with a glass marble added to amuse the local children.
But coopering combined with abuse have their limitations, and after a few years I had to strengthen the head using the construction I should have used in the first place.
What other good ideas are out there?
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