Canoe-building and/or American Boy's Handy Book

Next month ( it’s coming up soon!), I am teaching a co-op lesson for which this year’s theme is engineering. My topic is designing and building canoes. I have some good lesson plan information from TryEngineering.org (cool site, by the way), but I’m wondering if any of you have read any books about canoe-building. The range in ages is 8-14, with some younger/older siblings along from time to time.

Also, I think there is a chapter on building small boats in the book, The American Boy’s Handy Book by Daniel C. Beard. If any of you have read this book, do you think it would be something I could recommend as part of my lesson. I would like to have a few resources available to recommend for further exploration. I think the Beard book is available at a local library.