Questions about building a piroque?

[WadeH]

I am starting a 16' piroque. I found some Meranti to use, all I have to do is go get it. My ideas are this. Epoxy inside and out. Glass on the outside. Maybe silicone the bottom with Hunter Green paint above the waterline. White inside and try to do somesort of antislip coating on parts of the bottom floor. My main question is that I have heard several people comment on not using oak. I had thought about putting oak as inside and outside gunwhales leaving the oak natural looking with varnish and oak as a couple of seats. Since this is a piroque am I going overboard with it? Thanks for any feed back.

[Thorne]

White Oak = Good. Red Oak = Bad.

;0 )

You might want to consider something lighter for the seats, your part of the country has some good cypress available I hear...

[WadeH]

Just out of curiousity why is Red Oak bad? Is it just weight. And I thought White oak is hard to glue or epoxy.

I will check into the Cypress, that should look pretty good natural also for seats and gunwhales. Do you think 1/4" x 1 1/2" to 5/16" x 1 1/2" thick gunwhales with the same thickness for spacers on the inside gunwhale would be good enough or do they need to be thicker. Thanks.

[Thorne]

Red oak rots in wet environments, white oak is fairly rot-resistant. Oak can be harder to epoxy than other woods but in my personal experience with non-frame parts it glues up OK. If you are relying on just epoxy to hold the pieces you will build from oak, you might want to consider another type of hardwood.

Can't speak to the size of the gunwale or inwale -- what do the plans call for? If you don't have plans for your specific boat, you may want to buy some (or a book) that covers building a similar boat.

[Cuyahoga Chuck]

Here's the pirogue of a highly opinionated paddler;
http://209.190.4.227/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=333
If you look at the bottom of the page you'll see that I have it on my shoulders, portage style. To me this is important. The boat gets cartopped and is often carried from parking space to the water's edge (never more than ¼ mile) by me without any assistance.
If you want that kind of versatility you have to chose your materials wisely. I used a common underlayment that was 20 lb. a sheet. That is as light as okuome and much lighter than meranti. This pirogue has no interior structure so that wasn't a consideration. The gunnals and the portage yoke are hard maple and the breasthooks are red oak which added a little weight. These woods are not boatbuilding favorites but that doesn't matter. They are all coated with epoxy and spar which is plenty for a boat that doesn't spend much time in the water.
When this boat was finished it weighed 45 lb. which is as much as I wanted to carry so no glass was put on the outside. The bottom did get gouged from river runs and a little of that black ick invaded the plywood. That was taken care of by drying the hull during the winter and repairing the bad spots. This has gotten tiresom after a few years so I'm considering laying a single piece of 6 oz. from the keel strip to the margin of the 'glass tape in the chines. The chine seam is held together by two layers of 6 oz. glass tape which has survived numerous collisions with rocks, boulders and other river obstructions.
Red and white oak grow with long interior channels that can allow water to wick deep into the wood. White oak has natural blockages in those channels that keep the water penetration minimal. In either case a coating of epoxy on all end grain solves that problem forever.
If you are building with glue and screws make the glue epoxy and get the benefits that only epoxy can give.
You can put as much fancy work as you like on your boat. But, remember, it's basically a flat bottomed canoe. And if you want to use it like a canoe it has to portage and paddle with ease. So, lighter is better. If you are neither going to portage nor paddle none of the above matters except the part about using epoxy.
Oh, yeah, what pirogue design are you building?

[WadeH]

I am building the pirogue 500 from Matt over at Jemwatercraft. I have not asked him about reducing the gunwhales yet. The plans call for a 1x2 inside and optional 1x2 outside. But I thought, I know I should not do that because it gets me into trouble, having the spacers would do just about the same but leaving me areas to tie down equipment if needed.

Chuck I have been to your site before and looked at your pirogue. It looks great. I wish we areas around here to explore like you have. Mine will be used mainly for fishing in a small lake we have and a few trips to some of the local rivers. Most of the time it will be two of us so carring it should not be a problem.

Beaching it all the time at the lake and on the rivers is the reason I thought about using the silicone on the bottom. I have read some great things about it.