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in consideration of wood for OK24


1blueheron

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I am considering building the OK 24.  I have my own bandsaw mill and am capable of milling and planing some very high quality yellow pine and Eastern red cedar of which I have fairly large amounts on hand.  Would it be possible to use yellow pine for the stem and stringers/frames, Use meranti ply for the bottom and then strip plank it with eastern red cedar and then glass the cedar?  Also considering running a thin center core of White oak for the stem and laminating over it with yellow pine.  I can cut white oak to dimension and possibly find some naturally curved members.  Is this re-inventing the wheel?  Would it produce a better boat or inferior boat?

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Blue.......

 

I would think there would be both pluses and minuses to milling your own lumber. Certainly if you can select the right kind of tree and you are milling it,  you don't have to worry about maximum yield from each log, so you could end up with straight grained lumber with no knots, no runout, no sapwood, no pith and a tight grain. Lumber that I have found to be almost impossible to find in our local construction lumberyards. Also,  if you are milling it, you can create quarter or flat sawn, as the various pieces dictate.

 

But of course it will have to be stacked and dried. Your lumber needs to dried down to no more than 10% or less, so unless you have a kiln, there is going to be some lag time between when you mill it and when you can use it, but you have a mill, you already know that.

 

I would skip the white oak. The high quality yellow pine you refer to will be plenty strong and you won't have to worry about different woods and movement over time.

 

Can't help you with the red cedar. Seems plywood would be the better choice for a lot of reasons, but if you wanted to pursue the novelty of doing that, it could possible be done.

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Howard,

 

That is exactly my thoughts.  The lumber you can buy at a store is pretty sad these days. I get spoiled having my own lumber yard. I might add that I can mill up to 30' long so it would likely eliminate some scarfing for me. I won't be starting this boat build until at least next fall so if I get the wood sawn this summer, itwould have a full year of air drying and it shoudl be pretty close to proper MC and very stable.  Pine air dry's quite quickly if kept under tin.  I hate going to a lumber yard, picking out lumber from the stack, bringing it home and three days later being out of the stack it looks like an airplane propeller or a snake.  They mill that stuff with a lot of stress in it.  I can take the time to read a log and mill it without stress and to pick and choose my boards as they come off the log.  I can also cut the stuff almost to veneer thickness which is nice for bending and doing laminations. I don't have to try to reduce standard dimensional lumber into thin strips.

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BH:

 

Where are you located? Having fought the dimensional lumber issue for the Princess 26, if I had known a reliable source for lumber as you describe, I might have been tempted to drive a long way to pick it up, or at least spring for the freight to have it shipped. I only ask as you might be able to get some boat lumber business if you can provide what people want and need. Others on this forum might be inclined to do the same.

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Howard,

I am located in Virginia. About an hour north of the NC state line.  It probably would not be viable or cost effective to ship from here to missouri but you might be able to find a bandmill sawyer who could help you.  Let me know what your needs are and what general region of your state you are in and I might be able to put you in touch with someone. Usually they are cheaper for a better quality product as they can cut out the middle man and the freight cost you absorb buying from the big boxes. They like markets where there is no grade stamp required to meet a "code".   I talk with a lot of them on another forum.  I only saw as a hobby at the present time.  I bought the saw to build a timberframed house. Sawing is a lot of fun.  Most of the truly beautiful wood never makes it to market.  It is chipped up.  Things like knees and crotches and burl. Gunstock posts and crucks made from natural butt flare etc. spalted, pecky and mineral stained.  Neat stuff especially for furniture and trim.  I will post some pictures when I can.  I might consider sawing for others as time and logs allow or in trade for labor/expertise on a boat project. I'm rather dumb when it comes to glass/epoxy work.  That's why I am here to learn.  I do like to barter a bit.  Most of our prime, dense, slow growth, tight grained southern yellow pine goes to telephone poles and treated lumber, Most of what you buy in the store as SYP is fast growth loblolly plantation grown and is very soft.

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But of course it will have to be stacked and dried. Your lumber needs to dried down to no more than 10% or less, so unless you have a kiln, there is going to be some lag time between when you mill it and when you can use it, but you have a mill, you already know that.

 

 

Howard, I think 14 to 16 percent would be plenty dry enough.  I use kiln dried lumber when I have to, but prefer air dried.  The air dried lumber retains its flexibility and life.  Kiln dried lumber is like, well, dead.    

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Dave: I would think you would want your moisture content down to at least 10% to 12% and maybe lower to get it dimensionally stable. If you are stress bending it, the higher content would be good, but I'd bend it into place, then leave it to dry down before I'd want to laminate to it. Otherwise, I'd think you might be creating internal stress issues on your joints?

 

I would agree completely on the air dried option, but to most us using softwoods such as doug fir or SYP, that is simply not available. Apparently we have shortleaf SYP in the south part of the state (about 150 miles south of where I am) but short of going down there and driving around knocking on doors, I was never able to find anyone down there to find the right types of logs and ability to mill it. The best alternative I found locally was a pole barn truss maker. He buys structural select grade SYP by the truckload and he allowed me to pick through his piles, some of which was machine stress rated (MSR). But that was kiln dried to 17% and nearly all of it was flat or slab sawn and it also had all the ususal defects, just fewer knots. In a full bundle of lumber it was unlikely to find even one clear quarter sawn stick of lumber. I came to understand that if they actually did that, they were screwing up.

 

So if a guy really does want to buy air dried, clear quartersawn lumber (fir or SYP), it won't come from a local lumberyard. I did find a commercial yard in Kansas City that stocks clear doug fir, and as I recall, they priced a 12 foot 2 x 8 at about $80 per stick, but even that was flat sawn and KD.  I was wanting quartersawn because it is dimensionally stable and stronger. The good thing about stitch and glue boats is the amount of structural lumber required is minimal, but of what there is, it is important. Thinking of the keel planks mostly, but also the keel stub, inwales, stem and stem cap. You would also want that if laminating wooden spars. For things like CB's and rudders, the flat sawn (really flat from the outside of a large log) would be ideal, as you are likely going to rip it to become quartersawn to get the grain running opposite the bend. Short lengths of flat sawn is not an issue. Lots of that around. Lowes usually has a stack of 2 x 4 doug fir with at least 4 or 5 easy to find flat sawn boards that could be used for CB's or rudders for about $2 per stick. It is the larger quartersaw pieces that is the problem.

 

So yes, if there are local guys around with bandsaws that can provide that, there might be a market for it. We do have bandsaw mills around and my dad has 1000 plus BF of oak, walnut, ash and cherry laying around in various barns. Not sure how much of that would be suitable for boats, however, I am planning to use the cherry for my interior trim. A lot of it has fancy grain that looks like those holograms on credit cards. The grain pattern changes as you look at it from various angles. Better still, to me, that is free.

 

BH, you might be surprised how far people would travel. I happen to have a sister who lives in Norfolk, so a drive down I-64 is not much of a hardship. But that is too late for me. I've already got most of the lumber I'm going to use.

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BTW, by pure coincidence a month or so ago I had reason to spend a few days driving around with one of the premier foresters in the state. His main area of expertise and interest is in walnut trees and he told me the same thing BH mentioned. When loggers harvest veneer logs, they usually leave the most valuable parts laying on the ground. The smaller stuff higher up above the veneer logs.

 

He was of the opinion that a guy with a little initiative and a bandsaw could make a lot of money following the loggers around harvesting this for what he called "the knick knack crowd".  Could be that great minds think alike?

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   BH - One of the advantages of a stitch-and-glue boat is the fact that the dimensional lumber is protected by epoxy.  I would save the rot-resistant and heavy white oak for more traditional builds and go with something lightweight and inexpensive like the lumberyard softwoods that Graham specifies.  Having said that, I used two types of lumber in my CS17.  I re-sawed rough-cut ash for the majority of the structural stuff since it was cheaper than big-box softwoods, but I took a weight penalty for that since ash is so dense (I might just as well have saved time and weight by using dimensional lumber for only a few dollars more).  I also used home re-sawn black walnut but only for appearance in a few places like the hatch-covers and coaming.

      Howard - I noticed a number of years ago that the trimmings from the walnut groves in California get burned despite the high price of walnut in the Eastern states and I wondered if there was some wood (Cherry? Maple? Apple?) that might be burned on the East coast but valuable in the west.  I envisioned a camper with a built in lathe pulling a lumber trailer to lead a nomadic lifestyle running one man's trash wood to the opposite coast to sell as treasure and bringing exotic castaway branches back home (adding value with the lathe along the way).  In the end I was too addicted to a regular paycheck so I stuck with engineering. ;)

   These days, of course, I'm in the land of eucalypts and it's a king's ransom to get a scrap of mahogany.

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Howard,

Thank you for the thoughtful replies. Your mind works similar to mine. If i am going to take the effort to buid something myself, i like to go the extra mile and get the details right. Using quartersawn flatsawn and even riftsawn in the apprpriate places should yeild greater strength and stability. Usibg the right parts of the log become a multiplier of that factor. I like the idea of bending some in a pre dry state and them allowing it to air dry to equilibrium. Perhaps i should consider a niche market opportunity in custom sawing for cold mold builders and hobbyists. Sourcing from a truss builders was a good idea. They do get some of the better stuff but it still isnt like picking out a tree and making prime cuts to specific to use.

Ken,

I might be wrong but i got the impression that graham tries to design around what the average home builder would have ready access to like dimensioned SPF type big box lumber. I would not try to replace the entire stem and keel with the white oak, just perhaps a 3/8" center core to give it more strength, and more important impact and crush resistance. I had the privilege of touring the uss constitution and was very impressed with the use of white oak and ots longevity in a marine environment. It is literally bullet proof in a multi- layr planked hull. Just a guess but i would venture my white oak piece would add less tha 12 lbs. To the build and that could likely be made back using eastern red cedar for battens or planking. Eastern red cedar is very lightweight and rot resistant. It is not a true cedar but is rather in the juniper family. I know juniper was used extensively in the core sound area back in the day. Yellow pine erc, and white oak are all rot resistant wheras white pine and many firs are not so much. Granted it is all epoxy coated but it makes.me feel better knowing there is a second line of defense.

Btw. Most of the walnut on the east coast is black walnut which is different than the english walnut they grow in groves in CA. Pecan is probably the east coast equivalent of west coast walnut. Neither bring a premium like black walnut. Yellow poplar is very light and strong. There is some very high quality poplar being harvested here now and large clear defect free wood is the norm. Might make a good alternative as well.

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We have 3 species of trees in MO that can be used as untreated fence posts. They are the eastern red cedar (juniper) that BH describes; black locust and osage orange, the latter of which goes by lots of other names, including hedge and bodark (aka bois d'arc.......bow wood). Generally the hedge is considered to be junk and only used for fence posts, but as my dad said, if it were not so plentiful, it would be more valuable than ipe. It is incredibly hard and dense and virtually rot resistant. Put too much of that in wood stove and open up the air and you might melt it down. But it is also almost impossible to find a straight one or one without knots. Same with black locust. Even more so with the ERC. Of the three, the ERC would be excellent stuff to use in stitch and glue boats as cleats for gluing plywood joints. Strong, light, glues well and really resistant to rot. Just tough to find any without the knots. The other two are a bit heavy for stitch and glue, and don't glue well (my test laminations with epoxy failed and fairly quickly) although a stem made of either hedge or black locust would make a pretty good battering ram.

 

BTW, almost one third of Missouri......literally millions of acres......is covered with trees and 95% of that is mostly trees of no commercial value whatsoever. Basically really large perennial weeds. What a waste.

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