The Steamboating Forum

Hi Guys,

Quick question for some of you wooden boat guys! The boat i'll be building is the Selway-Fisher Edwardian 30. The plans call for western red cedar, however, I have a really cheap local source of red oak.

Now, oak is heavier, and less rot resistant, but I think I can mitigate it by making the hull a bit thinner (but just as strong), and by wrapping the whole thing in fibreglass.

Is it worth it to save the cash, and go with the oak? Or is cedar what I should really be using?

Any insight would be most welcome! Thoughts, ramblings and chatter on the general subject also accepted!

--Steve

Red Oak, while quite strong, begins to rot when the first drop of water enters. Red Oak is famous for rotting quickly. Perhaps with totally reliable encapsulation it would do OK, but the labor to achieve this would be high, and of questionable life. If you count your labor at anything over a couple of dollars per hour, and if you want your efforts to last a reasonable length of time, then build with the right materials.

Wow? That bad?! Glad I asked!

Is red cedar the only option then?

Northern white pine is also good ... But you are asking a book answer on a forum ... This is not to discourage you but to encourage you to carefully research the excellent design you are about to undertake.

What was helpful to me at that stage was to read as much as I could get my hands on. The Wooden Boat Store - http://www.woodenboatstore.com/ - has a number of helpful volumes on boatbuilding and the considerations involved. While these books are not cheap, they are far cheaper than building in haste or with the wrong materials.

Arriving at any one given design is a compromise. You want to "own" the design, the required materials and the required commitment before you start making chips.

All the best,

"Steam Queen"s hull is yellow cedar [cypress from BC] Harder than Red Cedar. Boat was built in 1987 and the wood is as sound as the day it was built!

S. Weaver wrote:Northern white pine is also good ... But you are asking a book answer on a forum ... This is not to discourage you but to encourage you to carefully research the excellent design you are about to undertake.

What was helpful to me at that stage was to read as much as I could get my hands on. The Wooden Boat Store - http://www.woodenboatstore.com/ - has a number of helpful volumes on boatbuilding and the considerations involved. While these books are not cheap, they are far cheaper than building in haste or with the wrong materials.

Arriving at any one given design is a compromise. You want to "own" the design, the required materials and the required commitment before you start making chips.

All the best,

Are there a few books in particular that you found useful?

I'm all in favor of reading as much as I can!

farmerden wrote:"Steam Queen"s hull is yellow cedar [cypress from BC] Harder than Red Cedar. Boat was built in 1987 and the wood is as sound as the day it was built!

She's that old den? She doesn't look like a 20 year old boat for sure!

--Steve

stevey_frac wrote: Are there a few books in particular that you found useful?

How to Build a Wooden Boat by McIntosh
Boatbuilding by Chapelle
Boatbuilding Manual by Steward
Building Classic Small Craft by Gardner
Gougeon Brothers (if you are doing cold-molding)
Carvel Planking I & II (I think this is out of print) by Simmons (I'm not at home, so I'm doing this from memory ...)

Thanks!

The boat i'm going to build eventually is a strip planked hull. I've found one or two books on that, that I want to take a peek at, and I'd welcome more.

--Steve

I'd urge you to carefully read and master the boatbuilding data in the books mentioned above. Chapelle is the more encyclopedic. I'd also urge you to work closely with the designer, who should be happy to provide answers to your questions. I am not a particular fan of strip planking for a variety of reasons. (It is wasteful of expensive wood stock, it far more difficult to repair than traditional construction, it is dependent upon epoxy, never fiberglass!, sheathing which is expensive, and it is more labor intensive to construct such a hull. About its greatest advantage is that it does not require as much skill to build.) There are a lot of boats today designed for strip planking because it appeals to the unskilled dreamers who buy plans without having developed the craft skills to build a boat properly. Designers design boats to sell plans, so you can figure it out.

Your location will dictate the availability of wood to build your boat. There are many good boatbuilding woods and many more that aren't. (Slathering epoxy over it, the so called myth of "encapsulation," is not a solution. (Epoxy is not impermeable.) There aren't many places in the world where there is water that there isn't good boat building wood. Many find WRC too soft for planking stock, although it is commonly used in strip planking. Some have developed severe allergies to WRC's aromatic sawdust and respiration equipment is recommended if sanding or sawing it.

You'd find Alaskan Yellow Cedar (actually a cypress, as is WRC) a better planking wood if building traditionally.

The point is, if you aren't in the Pacific Northwest, you may find local timber on the East Coast, the Great Lakes or Down South that will be far less costly than the stuff they make pencils and cedar closet paneling out of.