Slocum`s Spray

there are some species of soft woods that are getting difficult to find in old growth straight grain, clear, Things like southern yellow pine and a few of the others but when it comes to the hardwoods its a whole other story, Cedar is even making a comeback and starting to come down in price although the quality has a ways to go yet. Cedar costs me about a buck a foot and if I ask for select they just send me so much extra that there's bound to be x amount of select in the pile somewhere. So while there are a few species that are still under a lot of pressure mostly from the housing industry the vast majority have recovered from the mismanagement of the past. At least around here. The tropical hardwoods cost an arm and a leg and availability is limited, but I pretty much only ever deal in the domestic hardwoods so I just cant speak of that market with any authority.

Most of the wood cut around here is crap that gets sent off to the housing industry cause its basally worthless pine anyway and it has reduced coniferous forests to a shadow of there former selves so in that sense you are right, but when it comes to North American hardwoods there is really no shortage. So its also a matter of comparing apples to apples when you speak talk about whats available and what isn't.

 

Institut of forestry.

 

Here in the Pacific NW where we have a tree or two, I paid $250 for two boards of Alaska Yellow Cedar (VG select) about 2"x12"x9' last week. Cedar at $1.50 b.f. is probably not planking grade and could be pencil or incense cedar, not boatbuilding woods. There are many "peckerwood" sawmills back in the woods around here and one can get a good deal if buying a whole tree, but as for going to the store and buying boat wood, it's available but I sure can't find it cheap.

 

At the beginning of last century, the forest were wildly cut down due to the firewood, the shipping industry, (The emergency fleet of 1916 took several hundred million of board feet) the logging for the other countries demand, the housing explosion, some underlined of road, and no idea how to manage forest.
Now we manage forest better, not everywhere, but progress is made. the big consumption of wood is paper pulp.
Here in the US the housing is a great consumer, and the export to Japan.
Yes the wood is better now that it was, we know better and we manage in an international basis. Launched from the University of Maine, and association of professional all over the world is working on the reforestation. some great result in Africa, in the US and other countries.
Daniel

 

Is "Kiri" wood Kauri? Or something different? Kauri is one of the best boat woods on the planet.

 

Some of you seem to like BERTIE photos on this SPRAY thread. Here she is in Charleston OR in 2007 and a little earlier in 1976. In the OR photo you can see BERTIE's Danish Marstal-style transom which is somewhat different from SPRAY.
Notes on building photo:
1. Essex style stem shores are also the scaffold horse that stays in place the entire build. This sort of thing is key in being quick and without waste motion and the town of Essex Massachusetts, on a muddy tidal creek, brought this certain style of construction to fishing vessels that worked well, the Gloucester schooner, that they built incredibly quickly, 3 months being average for a 100 footer. I slavishly copied as many of their methods as worked for me and this was one.
L.F. Herreshoff called Gloucestermen "a random collection of green oak held together with a few trunnels" but I think he exaggerated as far as most of them go.
2. First whole frame in, sawn Port Orford cedar, again Essex design details here in frame layout and no back rabbet.
3. Transom half in place. This was built of 3" fir sawmill joists that had air dried for 75 years or so, edge-drifted with galv wrought iron 3/4" dumps.

About the OR photo. Heidi and I were on our way from the PT wooden boat festival to California in late September. We left Charleston here and got in a force 9-10 gale that broached us uncontrollably at least a dozen times between 2300 and 0100. We were running under tight-sheeted jib only and she was steering herself as usual but we'd broach on some of the seas and go side-surfing down the steep face. It was unnerving but even at 90 degrees to the breaking crest she just heeled a little and slid out of the way until we hit the bottom of the wave, got steerage and did it all over again. The decks stayed fairly dry most of the time with only the occasional dumpster load of water coming aboard. BERTIE had never done this in all our miles together and I was trying to see what was happening.
When I finally got it through my thick skull that the windage of the furled mizzen sail so far aft (in the photo the mizzen gear is run in for berthing but at sea the sail lives in lazyjacks, sheeted to the long boomkin which is not rigged here) was the lever arm slewing us around when we were on a very nasty breaking sea steep enough to get the rudder out of the water, and so I easily (standing lugsail) took the sail, boom and yard off the mast and lashed it to the lifelines a little forward, getting rid of that critical bit of windage so far aft-- presto, the tight sheeted jib took control again and we got locked back on course down wind, no more hints of broaching or slewing off course though the seas were their same very high and short, continually breaking scary selves and we surfed on and on until it moderated, and by dawn the wind was 5 kts and the memorable night had disappeared as though it never existed.
Lesson for me was that the flexibility and options of having a standing lug mizzen helped keep us safer that night, because it's so easy to move around and allowed me to move the static CE forward in the gale by removing the furled sail from the mast. Of course, BERTIE's rig is very specifically designed and suited to her and would not work on most conventional craft.

 

ya if you only bought two boards and you cherry picked em then ya you paid a premium, I tend to buy in larger quantities ( seldom less than a few thousand feet of any one species ) and at wholesale prices. Something tells me we are just not comparing apples to apples. Folks in the timber industry hear "boat" and get dollar signs in there eyes, so you have to be kinda careful about that. I tend to build high end stuff but have yet to get cracking on "the build" but clear select is clear select regardless of what your planing to do with it.

2 pcs 2x12x9 = 36bd/ft = $7 bd/ft for cedar? someone saw you coming my friend

Sitka maybe or Port Orford but those are mast and spar grade in select VG and shouldn't be wasted on planking. Deal is right wood for the right use and your going to save a ton of money. Cedar planking is generally Western Red or Eastern yellow, If your using say Sitka on a bottom then I suppose you might be hemorrhaging about 7 a foot for it but its not something most folks would do with a 7 a foot product. The benifit of those woods is in its structural qualities and not in any significantly longer life span, the later being key in any planking consideration. Unless of course you are cold molding an impregnated/encapsulated wood and then its kinda irrelevant.

cheers and got any pictures
would love to see what your spending that kinda money on

B

 

No,

Kiri is "Paulownia tomentosa" the lightest wood after Balsa, but several times stronger.
A perfect material for lightweight strip planking, or every application where a better sandwich core than crappy foam is required.

The statements about unaffordable, or lesser quality timber on todays market are not what I encounter in daily business with boatbuilding timbers.

We have a forest management for over 300 years in central and northern Europe, and buy first quality even cheaper today than ever before. When I compare the cost for a very decent house at the time a m³ sawn oakwood was 1.000 DM, that was 35.000 DM for the house. Today the timber is 3.000€ = 6.000 DM and the house is 100.000€ = 200.000 DM. Not really any difference.

 

Building up a stem filler knee deep inside the bow out of bits and pieces to avoid removing planking in the repair. New outer stem is Purpleheart.
Here's the pic as it started coming apart. Cutting the rabbet and fitting the bits is much easier with VG and the AYC is pretty rot resistant. Price was premium for wide boards.
In my career I have often used salvage wood in boat and small ship repair as well as select/structural from the lumberyard. But I must say that if you want to steam planking on a shape with a lot of bend and twist you need good wood. And if you want it to last you must avoid sapwood, blue stain and any other haven for fungi so that leaves half of what's in the lumberyard right there.
Sitka is not used for planking in my experience unless it's a home built boat from Alaska, best spar stuff though. Doesn't finish very well and not very rot resistant at the waterline.
Red Cedar is soft, brittle and splits easily but is much used for planking. It's easy to damage the seams when caulking if you're not careful.
PO cedar makes up most of BERTIE and was bought from the mill at low cost and would do so again if building a similar boat from scratch. Around here Western Larch is the preferred workboat planking these days, much better than Fir.
My apprenticeships were with old grumpy guys for whom no piece of wood was ever quite perfect. One said "Do the very best you can and it'll be barely good enough", and I've tried to carry that on.

 

To me as an amateur, this is one of the more interesting threads on boatdesign.net. I think I learn as much from the disagreements as I do from the agreements, because a lot of what looks like disagreement seems to boil down to difference in perspective instead: looking at the same thing from a different angle.

 

Is politics the same?

 

Nice statement troy and I agree 100%.

 

If you stop learning you're effectively dead.

 

Only sometimes.....

 

Sorry, not true. You just have to know where to go. I've gotten 250 x 50 beams without any problems, my stair case in Sydney is made from 6m lengths of 300 x 75 for the sides and 250 x 50 for the treads.

Some timbers are hard/expensive/impossible to get (huon pine for example) but basic hardwood, no. Not for me anyway.

PDW