rot resistant wood question

[alan white]

Yeah, it's bringing in wet wood and drying it unevenly and too quickly without stickering it or any consideration at all. I've seen some nasty and weird pieces of wood in those stores.

[pescaloco]

Originally Posted by alan white

Yeah, it's bringing in wet wood and drying it unevenly and too quickly without stickering it or any consideration at all. I've seen some nasty and weird pieces of wood in those stores.

Thats for sure !

[Boston]

thats got a lot to do with that they stack there wood all wrong just as you say
Ive seen whole rows stacked vertically instead of flat
funny thing is when asked they say
"oh its finish wood, its supposed to be that way"

also what they do have stacked horizontally gets picked through so often it ends up spaghetti lumber in no time

my lumber is always stacked over dirt and on leveled stickers under a shed

[alan white]

It's really a bit daunting finding good lumber. Nowadays, lumber marketing is more than ever based on selling to weekend warriors, and even so-called carpenters today are extremely limited, having been trained by corporate interests to design jobs around limited lines of (expensive) "products",
I know a lot of carpenters, for example, who are convinced by marketing influences that normal spruce lumber is the worst thing to build a deck from, which is nonsense------ it can make a much better deck than PT lumber at half the price, it's just that you have to know how to assemble the materials in such a way that it sheds water properly.
Wood available in box stores nowadays is pretty horrible stuff. I feel sorry for anyone starting out in boat-building today because box stores have put a lot of great yards out of business, only to narrow available lines of wood products and instead to concentrate on price alone.
Quality suffers. Lowes and Home Depot appear to have a lot of products, but most of it is crappy stuff with too many knots, warpage, and splits.
There are a lot of things that make wood do this. Wood is complicated and doesn't like to be treated like a packaged product. First, not all wood is expected to stay straight anyway. Wood grown on steep hillsides reacts to drying by bending. Trees with a lot of branches down low have giant knots.
The cutting process further degrades the wood by sawing it through with parallel cuts, which orients most of the grain in such a way as to shrink (and expand (think boat planks) more than necessary.
Then, rapid drying in a kiln sets up internal stresses that causes internal cracking that weakens the wood and promotes rot.
The truth is that a boat will last twice as long if the wood is properly grown, cut, dried, and stored. It should be grown or chosen from stands of evenly spaced trees on level ground. It should be quarter (and not plain) sawn, or at least chosen from quarter-sawn stock. It should be air-dried for at least a year for each inch of thickness, and stickered properly to allow even air circulation. Finally, it should not be exposed afterwards to extremes of moisture or dryness, or different conditions from one side to another.
For boats, moisture content should be about what the outdoors experiences.
Anyone who's ever seen a two by four bind a powerful table saw by clamping the blade as the wood stresses react to being divided has experienced first hand the worst of modern wood production.
Are there alternatives? Yes, but expect to pay good money or grow and dry your own wood. Either that or make your boat out of strips or plywood. The days of good wood cheap are over.

[Paul No Boat]

If the wood is not being chosen for looks and grain, another good way is to coat the whole assembly with "Drylock"

I built a backyard fishpool from concrete and had problems with the lime in it turning the water so alkaline it killed my fish. Thank God I tried a few cheap goldfish first before investing in Koi. But the Midwest Pond and Koi society instructed me to just paint the whole thing with Drylock and I had happy healthy fish from then on. You could eat the stuff and not be poisoned although I'd not recommend it.

[Boston]

well said Allan
I am kinda a wood connoisseur and good carpenters are almost impossible to find any more

another reason to build my own

cheers
B