Veneers from floorboards?

[Aramas]

Those of you that live on the unfortunate side of the planet may not have come across NZ kauri, but it's probably the second best boatbuilding softwood in creation (after huon pine). It's durable, works and glues well, is a wonderful colour and has that deep refective shimmer when finished bright. On the downside I gather it's now a protected species and isn't generally available in quantity.

However, during the 20's and 30's tens of thousands of Australian and NZ houses were floored with the stuff. Borers like it and it tends to split unless a lot of care is taken when pulling it up, but I know at least one salvage yard that keeps it and has some stock from time to time.

Consequently I might be able to get hold of 80 year old NZ kauri floorboards in enough quantity to build a boat. It's not really a question of trying to save money (it wouldn't) but more a case of responsibly recycling a high quality resource that's no longer available.

The thing is, how viable is it to turn 6" x 3/4"ish boards into 6" x 1/4" or thinner veneers? (I'll have to experiment to see how thick they can be and still bend around the required radius) I figured a jig on a bandsaw might do it - has anyone tried that? I asked an old feller about it once and he called it 'deeping' and also implied that it was rather hit and miss. A lot of them are cupped, so at some stage it has to be thicknessed. If the veneers were bandsawed a little oversize could they still be thicknessed ok? How thin can a thicknesser go before it just eats the wood?

If I give the impression that I don't know what I'm talking about it's probably because I don't - that's why I'm asking smile.gif

Oh, and since it's probably still christmas day in the less advanced parts of the world, I hope everthing is going well and no one's brass monkeys are suffering excessively ;)

[Lucky Luke]

I had a Kauri deck on mt schooner Morwenna, built in England 1914. Wonderful wood, light, flexible, beautiful color when left bare, just as beautiful when varnished. On the other side, a little "furry", some kind of funny cross grain, not very hard surface, not the wood I would run through thicknesser planer down to any thing you could call "veneer". Neither does any by the way. I tried, with extremely sharp cutters, and after "bandaging" the roller on the thicknesser planer (professional one) how far down I could go with some mahoganies, ash, and oak. Only oak would go to 1 mil. as a minimum, others made a mess at 1.5, sipo at 2 mil.

I wonder then: what about decking your boat in kauri? It is extremely durable (ref Morwenna), lighter and softer under your feet than teak, ans would be a real kiwi boat!

I'm a little surprised you did not reply my personal message....

[Wild Dingo]

aahhh Luke mate not to worry tis more a matter that some folks dont see them...

Cant add to the discussion here other than to say its bloody good timber been used on boats from Freo throughout Aussie for many years... my only gripe is that I just cant get the stuff! :mad: on the other and I can get me hands on some really seriously big ol Jarrah from the old Freo wool stores $400AUD a 50ft lenght of roof beams along with the uprights which are friggin massive some really SERIOUSLY nice timbers... but you gotta have someplace to stick something that big till you gets to use it :rolleyes: ah well :cool:

Good luck and hope you can do it mate! :cool:

[Bob Smalser]

I don't know anything about your wood species, but I could resaw and plane it easily enuf. But I doubt I could get 3 resawn boards of any thickness from 3/4" stock...most likely I'd get 2 and plane them to a quarter or so.

Doing a half dozen for bookmatched panels is one thing...doing thousands of linear feet is another. I'd need a well-tuned bandsaw of 16" or greater size, a set of three or more proper resaw blades, somebody locally who sharpens them, a point fence for the saw ( you can easily make your own), an offbearer, and a commercial-quality thickness planer.

If the planer doesn't adjust down to 1/4", then a backer board is made of MDF or something hard and flat as a base to run the resawn boards thru the planer on.

Strongly cupped wood might need to be jointed flat and thickness planed before resawing...you'd lose a whole lot of thickness doing that, possibly wrecking your attempt to use the wood to max efficiency by getting 1/4" stock from it.

I'd experiment with uncupping them in full sun by wetting the concave side and leaving the convex side sunny-side-up, running them thru the resaw as they uncupped. The resawn boards resulting will surely cup again, but I don't believe that will be as big an issue using them in veneer thickness.

[Aramas]

Thanks Bob - they'll probably have to be a fair bit thinner than 1/4", so how thin can you go with a thickness planer? Kauri is similar in weight and strength to douglas fir but without the winter/summer rings. I wouldn't have a clue how thin they would have to be to bend around the bilge radius (albeit at 45 degrees)without steaming. I figure the thickest stuff that can do it without exploding would be best since it means fewer layers than thinner stuff. My guess would be that it might have to be as thin as 3mm or so, which is about 1/8" I think. I hope not though.

I guess I better start looking at the feasibility of hiring or buying some hefty gear - or maybe just paying someone that knows what they're doing. Honest men are hard to find these days though. Due to past experience I've vowed to never hire another tradesman. It seems that to a lot of people a 'tradesman' is an inept thief that can't follow directions smile.gif

Luke - I didn't even know there was a pm. Even after reading your post the only way I could find it was by checking my profile. I've got so much security on this PC that nothing gets through - no popups and some cookies don't work (they don't here).

I sent a reply but it may not have worked. There's no record of it. Anyway, thanks for the offer but I have it under control. Getting an accurate estimate G is the only time consuming part, and none of it is difficult.

[Ron Williamson]

Most times when we try this kind of thing,we end up with lots of waste.Generally,too much waste(cost too) to make it viable for anything but very small jobs.
In my experience using our planer for the last 15 years,(it won't go thinner than 1/4",we need to clamp a sub table to the main tables,BTW)your results will be marginal.Short grain will often break as the feed rolls apply pressure,then the wood won't feed and you will have lots of jams.
Unless all of your wood is very straight grained with few knots and little cupping,this sounds like a major pain.
R

[NormMessinger]

Mostly what Bob said. He's a much better craftsman than I. However, I just made 1/8" thick pieces from black walnut, Hondurous mahogany and spalted maple. The resaw blade on a 10" Inca bandsaw was a wood slicer (resaws 5-1/2" walnut easily) from Highland Hardware (no joy Downunder) and a Riobi planer with dull blades. Pieces were from 3/4" to 3" wide. When one gets that thin however there is considerable risk to breaking the piece if there is any runout on the grain. All of which means nothing except to suggest that you get a piece and try it.

[Paul Scheuer]

As a complete amateur and one not familiar with exotic foreign woods, I can only say that I resawed the 3/8 mahogany for the sheer strakes, cedar planking for my skiff and some 3/16 cedar for my canoe restoration on my Rockwell 14, from 6 inch boards.

As Bob said, flat boards and a tall fence is good. My fence was a braced 90 degree plywood assembly, clamped to the table. I had a spring "feather board" type thing to keep the boards on the fence.

If I was going to do a lot, I'd figure out how to keep a consistent feed going. My off-the-wall thinking leads me to a gravity feed where the board slides down an incline into the blade of a tilted away saw.

The 3/8 was actually cut to a little under 1/2 and planed by a friend with an antique planer. The canoe planking was cut to 3/16 and sanded to match the exisitng planking at just over an eighth by hand.

If I was going to do anything thinner, I'd think about surfacing with a drum sander rig and probably rip the boards to more manageable widths.

[Aramas]

Sounds awful. Looks like I'm going to have to find a plan C (Plan A was to use locally available araucaria veneers - nice wood but low durability, which bothers me). All the good softwoods in this part of the world are rainforest timbers, and since we've already cut down over 90% of our rainforests they're hard to find, expensive and ethically questionable. The asian and pacific island stuff is easier to get but there's still the ethical questions.

In the old days they would have just gone out in the bush and picked a tree. Of course they probably would have then spent 3 weeks hauling it out with a bullock team, but time wasn't money then. Only money was smile.gif

(Just thinking aloud here) I guess the local candidates would be huon pine, celery top pine, king billy pine, north or south queensland kauri, and white beech. I don't like king billy - it's like a sponge and ugly tongue.gif Huon pine is just too rare and expensive now. Last I heard white beech was coming in from the Solomons or somewhere, but I suppose there are still some on private land here. Celery top and NQ kauri are probably the best bets - and since celery top has a tendency to split and it develops pressure wood (which is brittle) and only grows 2000 miles away on the other side of Bass Strait, and I live in NQ, then NQ kauri seems most likely.

I read something about south queensland kauri (araucaria agathis robusta) being plantation grown, but I doubt that there are any mature ones yet (30 years to harvest) and I don't much like the idea of using thinnings. It's probably not the same as the real thing anyway.

*sigh*

Any locals have any suggestions on where to get NQ kauri veneers? Hell, I'd settle for a tree on the ground and a sharp knife tongue.gif

Maybe I should just emigrate to NZ :cool:

[Bob Smalser]

We and Canada don't ship any Western Red Cedar down there?

Straight-grained, clear and long lengths available, easy to work, dries and glues easily, little seasonal movement, durable and relatively inexpensive.

I sell it for $1.20 or so a BF in the log by the Scribner Scale, but generally recover 150-200 pct of scale milling it.

A weathered 8" beveled siding test corner...clear, No 1 WRC:

http://pic3.picturetrail.com/VOL12/1104763/2594265/31847154.jpg

[Lucky Luke]

Right Tony,

I do confirm that old kauri is brittle. I don't know of it "new", but it does not take much bending before breaking, right across the grain, without splinters, and very suddenly.
I thought this was a characteristic of it, not that it was due to age.

[Lucky Luke]

Aramas,
I got your mail.
I was thinking , since you mentionned that you did not have the "hydro" part in your fast yacht program, that... smile.gif

[ 12-26-2003, 12:56 PM: Message edited by: Lucky Luke ]

[George Roberts]

If the boards are 3/4" there is no reason why you should not get 3 pieces of .200" stock from each.

I use a 14" bandsaw with a 1/2" blade to resaw 6" stock. I find 2 .010" passes through a thickness sander cleans up all of the saw marks. I allow .060" for the saw blade and 2 sanding allowances for ech cut.

Watch out for the nails and holes.

[Aramas]

wrc is readily available, but I don't like it much. It's too soft and it's toxic (like vomiting blood toxic :rolleyes: ). Douglas fir is readily available but most of it is NZ plantation grown, and it's not the same wood as the Canadian stuff. It has big wet sap pockets and is missing the prominent annular rings (milder climate).

The closest local equivalent to wrc is king billy pine. The old king billy boats look like they have some kind of skin disorder from the accumulated bumps and scrapes, whereas the kauri and huon pine boats look fresh and new even when they're over a century old.

Luke - I do stabilty without AutoHydro by heeling a new group to each angle and setting them up for correct displacement and trim manually, then using the static hydro and weight reports to find GZ directly - it takes a little while but it's not difficult.

[ 12-26-2003, 10:48 PM: Message edited by: Aramas ]

[Carlsboats]

In New Zealand seven years ago, my wife and I visited the kauri museum on the north island.
I imagine they are still there, and maybe they have a website.
The people on staff there seemed to know everything worth knowing about kauri, so check them out.
Two points about the wood stuck in my mind: The stuff lasts forever -- tens of thousands of years; and when big logs are sawed, they flop down off the saw table and lie flat, without cupping. In the museum they had a single-slab table suitable for a corporate boardroom -- maybe 15 feet long and more than 4 feet wide. This is indeed beautiful wood, but whether you could resaw it to veneer thickness .... ask the museum.

[Banjo]

Originally posted by Aramas:
Due to past experience I've vowed to never hire another tradesman. It seems that to a lot of people a 'tradesman' is an inept thief that can't follow directions smile.gif
Not sure if this was tongue in cheek or not but I take offence to this statement.
Granted there are some (sadly many) people out there calling themselves trades persons that shouldn't be, but making a broad sweeping statement like yours implies ALL trades people are inept theives! :mad:

Banjo 'an ex trades man who took pride in his work and never had to advertise for work in 25 years'.........

[Aramas]

but making a broad sweeping statement like yours implies ALL trades people are inept theives!
Actually, it doesn't imply anything. What it does do is say that 'a lot' (meaning a substantial number, not most or all) of people think that way. I know some good tradesman, but I've usually found more bad ones than good ones. Even the good ones mostly can only do something one way.

A common job for NA graduates is to check all the work done on a vessel each day, and then do the calculations to see whether what the tradesmen actually did has to be redone (they rarely do what they're told to do, and basically ignore plans and instructions).

I suspect that most tradesmen do a job the way they know how, and will not do it differently no matter how much time is spent explaining, nor how much detail is on the drawings.