alternative to white oak?

[Bill Griffin]

It's getting late in the day here at work, and sloooowww. I am going to have to replace six floors of I think white oak, later this year. The ballast keel bolts pass through these. They are about 2" thick, 8/4. I'm sure I can get WO of that thickness at one of the local suppliers. But I was just wondering if there is some other specie that will work as well.

[ssor]

Black locust, Osage orange, Red mulberry, Honey locust, Sassafras, Hackmatack.

[wizbang 13]

....alaska yellow cedar....

[Bill Griffin]

Thanks, I'll most likely use white oak but am thinking I'd like to try something else if I can find it.

[Roger Long]

But I was just wondering if there is some other specie that will work as well.

Red oak has a bad reputation, worse than the reality I suspect. However, it does have a nice open grain that loves to suck up preservative. During my brief existence as a wooden boat builder, I tried the suggestion of a friend and boiled red oak pieces carefully (very carefully) in linseed oil. The water in the wood boiled off leaving a vacuum in the grain. When the oil was cooled, the linseed oil sucked back into the wood. The result was dark and looked like almost plasticized. I don't think those pieces will ever rot.

Probably too much work if your floor timbers are large but I always thought it was a neat idea.

For a boat that has any inside ballast or could use some, I always thought lead was the perfect material for floor timbers. Pour it to the right thickness and cut and fit like wood. Holds fastenings well and doesn't change size with moisture. Paul Rollins didn't like the idea because he thinks the metal might promote rot. He may be right but LFH used to have whole keels made out of lead instead of wood.

[Vinny&Shawn]

Black Locust is fairly easy to find here in Maine,it is a good rot resistant wood and is used by many instead of W.Oak for repairs.

[cap'nRod]

Go to your local lumberyard and see what is available in the plank sizes that you need. I don't know...around here we have doug fir and redwood available at most regular lumber yards without having to go to a 'hardwood' supplier. What do you have out there?

[ssor]

Try a local sawmill. Or look for woodmiser portable sawmill owner operators.

[Bill Griffin]

Thanks everyone for the suggestions. I know a couple local sawyers and of course Maine Coast Lumber is only a few miles away. Rogers recipes sound a little scary, but interesting. It still might be another month before I can get to work on this project, I'll be sure to take lots of pictures. The frames are mostly all broken, too.

[ssor]

Roger's recipe for this one is definitely an outside away from the barn operation. Didn't Finnestere use bronze floors?

[Bob Triggs]

Douglas Fir
Live Oak
Purple Heart
Angelique... to name but a few.

[seo]

I agree with your feeling that red oak is pretty good if well soaked with hardening oil. Black Locust is excellent and grows all over Maine. Because of the way it grows (and big heavy limbs break off) people often remove large Locust trees from around houses. All of my best locust finds in Maine have come from asking tree surgeon (what a name) types guys if they'd let me have the bottom couple bolts of a tree. It's not very good fire wood, and heavy, and there's no market for the saw logs, so I've been given big logs. I've been told that it's best to saw it when its green.
The competition for locust was farmers who wanted it for fence posts.
Locust is strong, hard, heavy, and rot resisting. It's not very attractive, and isn't easy to find in long straight-grained planks, so it's not lumberyard wood.
I like your idea of cast lead floor timbers, but wonder about the stability picture.
The idea of replacing the keel with a lead casting is described in NGH's "Herreshoff's Rules of Construction," so LFH borrowed it from his father.
My opinion is that it's important to fasten the lower planks to both the frames and floors, so that they help transferring load from the shell plating (planks and frames) and the backbone (keel, stem, rudder post, floors). My observation is that bolts fastening the floors to the frames mainly serves to break the frames.
End-grain locust takes fastenings plenty well, particularly it they're a size larges and two sized longer than the plank/frame fastenings.

[MikeVT]

How about ash? Anyone have info about durability?

[paladin]

My sugestions are Angelique or osage orange with Fir as a third choice.

[Mrleft8]

Ash would be a very bad choice.
But all this aside.... If White Oak is available, why go to the trouble of finding a suitable alternative?

[Bruce Hooke]

How about ash? Anyone have info about durability?

Ash is very poor on durability.

[seo]

Ash would be a very bad choice.
But all this aside.... If White Oak is available, why go to the trouble of finding a suitable alternative?

Because locust is better for the purpose. Refer to LF Herreshoff's comments on wood in "Commonsense of Yacht Design." Also, locust can be had for minimal cost. White oak was very much in demand during the 1980's for furniture and flooring, with the result that a lot of the best woodlots were cut over pretty hard.

[Mrleft8]

White Oak is about as hard to find as beer in a bar.

[johngsandusky]

I'll suggest Longleaf Yellow Pine. It can be found salvage from old building demolition. My boat uses it for everything styructural (not planking and decks). It's still sound after 42 years, mostly in Florida.

[ssor]

The local farmers that sell fire wood keep the locust for their own fires and sell the oak. Locust burns like coal and leaves very little ash.

[CharlieCobra]

Black Locust in good wide boards is very hard to find. I just got some 12/4 by 11" by 8' pieces but it took a month to find them. Each board weighs about 80-100 lbs because it's green. Amazing stuff though. Ya best have VERY sharp tools to work it...

[seo]

White Oak is about as hard to find as beer in a bar.

Spoken light a guy from CT, where it's the common oak. From CT to Indiana, down to PA, is prime country for oak, and country sawmills have it. In northern New England it's an import, with the attendant prices.

[seo]

Black Locust in good wide boards is very hard to find. I just got some 12/4 by 11" by 8' pieces but it took a month to find them. Each board weighs about 80-100 lbs because it's green. Amazing stuff though. Ya best have VERY sharp tools to work it...
The problem of coming up with wide planks led me to making floor timbers out of oil-soaked red oak with a 3" deep "shoe" on the bottom, where the floor was often wet with bilge water. I glued them up, even though realizing that locust doesn't glue well. It just made fitting them easier, and the idea was that the bolts and plank screws would hold the two parts in alignment. Worked fine, minor nuisance.
When Locust is green it's not too bad to work.
SEO

[CharlieCobra]

I've had no problems gluing up BL with epoxy. It certainly glues easier than white oak. I like the wood myself.

[ssor]

The only problem with gluing B locust is the wood is stronger than most adhesives. We usually evaluate a glue joint by the amount of wood pulled off the piece.

[cap'nRod]

White Oak is about as hard to find as beer in a bar.

$7 to $8 a bd ft out here on the left coast....same as mahogany.

[coelacanth2]

I'd second the locust - I've a stock, cut of my little slice of Heaven here for the cabin corners of my Seabird, when I get a "round tuit". Stuff splits well, takes a while to dry and doesn't seem to like to rot. I played with bending some in the microwave, let it dry for a few days after and used 10 minute epoxy to laminate up some arches as a trial. 3/8' thick with 3; 1/8 " plies and it wuld hold my 200+ lbs and hardly bend. didn't seem to delaminate either, 'tho I didn't do an outside leave - it exposed test, nor did I soak it. You could CPES your red oak - should suck THAT stuff up like a kid drinking Kool-Aid.

[Mrleft8]

$7 to $8 a bd ft out here on the left coast....same as mahogany.

$1bf at the mill. :D
Quartersawn KD 8/4 $7 at the boutique lumber store.