Building your boat with affordable local wood

[Alan D. Hyde]

Building your boat with local wood can make high-quality wood available at low cost, and often can prevent the waste of excellent material, while utilizing a non-threatened, renewable, resource.

Local wood is obtainable thru local sawmills, or (more frequently) from local individuals who own portable bandsaw mills.

A well-known bandsaw mill maker is WoodMizer. Their webpage contains links to their customers (sawyers) around the country----

www.woodmizer.com (http://www.woodmizer.com)

Other sawyers using other equipment may be found on the web or in the local yellow pages. Such "rescued*" wood (particularly if quarter-sawed) can make high quality framing and planking stock, and may cost as little as $.10 a board foot (that's what we last paid for white oak--- sawyer's fee divided by bd. ft. sawed).

Alan

*E.g., from a neighbor's lawn--- "you can have it if you'll take it down...." :D

[Ken Hutchins]

No argument from me. ;) The attitude that wood has to be from away is BS there are lots of good local wood and it's very satisfying to cut yer own, mill it and build a nice boat and lots of other things from it. :D OK, so my boat won't last as long as it would if it was teak or some other exotic wood, but I don't care it's my boat I made it with my own wood and it will outlast me. ;)

[BrianY]

Alan -

I've been trying to do just that - build a boat from locally available wood. However, you'd think that living in central of Massachusetts I'd have a pretty easy time find the materials, but it just ain't so. I guess you need to define "local". Certianly, if you include all of the New England States as "local" then I agree that it can be done. I can't find any in-state producer of any kind of cedar (locally sawn cedar is available in Maine if I want to drive 8 hours to get it), white oak is extremely scarce (out of 8 mills/sawyers contacted only one had some - a single 10 foot x 30 inch log), black locust can sometimes be found at a saywer in RI, but the local guys don't have any idea what it is, and of course we don't have doug fir or any of the other typical boat builiding woods. Heck, Home Depot doesn;t even stock doug fir areound here - we get "Spruce/Pine/Fir" aka "Whitewood" which rots as you watch. We do have lots of white pine that's readily available, so I guess that's something, but anyone looking to build a long lasting and rot resistant boat from local lumber in central MA is going to have a hard time.

At least that's my experience. I'd love to be corrected by someone who has had better luck with this sort of thing in these parts.

I envy you folks in the Pacific Northwest....

[Jim Budde]

I was thinking the same thing this weekend while cutting patterns for frames. The Tropic Bird I am building will be constructed , in part, with yellow pine and douglas fir from an early 1900's building torn down a few years back, osage orange felled in a storm and ash (the tree was knocked down by a toronado in 1993 .. friend cut the latter two into planks which I have since milled to specs ) Like Ken said, may not last forever, but at 60, forever is not as long as it used to be. And besides, it's fun to tell people that part of my boat used to be a building at 6th and Main.

[Ken Hutchins]

Just because the local mills don't have doesn't indicate it is not there, it only means there is not enough market for it so the loggers don't cut it. Learn to recognize the growing mature trees and you will be surprised at what you will find. Look out for good trees being cut for house lots, highways, shopping centers. I've travelled a fair amount thru MA and CT and in my opinion those areas are overdue for logging, lots of overly mature trees just waiting to be destroyed by the next big hurricane.

[Alan D. Hyde]

Many people are frightened by large trees near their houses, even though such trees may be healthy.

When they take down such a tree, it most frequently ends up as firewood--- often a waste of what might have been excellent building lumber.

My father and I have--- over the years--- dropped many such trees as a favor to various neighbors. We the take the sawlogs home and call the WoodMizer guy, who comes and saws them for us--- however we want them sawed. They are then stickered and seasoned until used.

If you can't find the precise wood you need, then just trade some of those black walnut boards you stickered last year for what you lack...

Smalser's got some threads that go into good detail about various aspects of felling, milling, stickering, and painting the ends to discourage end-checking.

Alan

[Venchka]

Originally posted by BrianY:
...At least that's my experience. I'd love to be corrected by someone who has had better luck with this sort of thing in these parts.

I envy you folks in the Pacific Northwest....Oa k in NW CT (http://www.woodenboat-ubb.com/cgi-bin/UBB/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=4&t=002946&p=)

There's lots of black locust being milled in CT. An 8 hour round trip to upper Maine for cedar doesn't seem near as bad as paying freight from the PNW for WRC. My guess is you can find cedar closer, maybe Vermont or NH?

Goosebay Lumber (http://www.goosebaylumber.com/)

Tweedie Cedar (http://www.tweedielumber.com/index.html)

Mr. Tweedie appears to be no more than 4 hours from central MA. For what it's worth, and I have no idea what their inventory is, Maine Coast Lumber in York, ME delivers to MA.

The stuff is out there. Go get it!

PS: I have a stack of stickered sweetgum, post oak and hickory from my little piece of Texas waiting to be turned into something nice. I wouldn't trade that wood for anything.

Wayne
In the Swamp. :D

[ 06-28-2005, 05:47 PM: Message edited by: Venchka ]

[Wild Wassa]

My local wood is interesting, Spotted Gum, Shining Gum and Blackwood, all fine boat building timbers. It is all a bit too heavy for use on little boats.

So I prefer the quality imported stuff, Western Red and Douglas. Thanks for sharing your fine timbers.

Warren.

[ 06-28-2005, 06:48 PM: Message edited by: Wild Wassa ]

[Dan McCosh]

Problem with local wood is all that they grow around here is white oak, cedar and cherry. Who would want to make a boat out of that stuff?

[Venchka]

How do Y'all stand it, Dan? And sassafrass mixed in with that other junk?

Wayne
In the Swamp. :D

[ 06-28-2005, 08:10 PM: Message edited by: Venchka ]

[ssor]

Before they built the railroads all boats were built of local wood. There were a lot of boats that were built for one way trips down the big rivers and broken up for the lumber at the end of the trip. The idea that a boat has to last longer than the builder is a 20th century concept. The cost of labor has driven the idea that boats should be durable. :(

[BillyBudd]

What's right for one boat isn't right for another. When building my Bolger 20' catboat, I ordered meranti plywood. Planks of native trees aren't sheets of ply and that was what I wanted for a trailerable lightweight mid-size boat. But when I started on a small decked canoe for my wife, Harry Bryan, the designer, said to me "What grows locally?" and the answer, here in western Mass., was pine. "So pine it is," said Harry. It turned out that, when I was away, the local sawyer came to my neighbor's land and cut some mature pines and I bought some of those planks. Could only have gotten more "local" if I'd taken down trees on my side of the road. In this instance, the boat will spend most of its time in the barn and Harry thought that would make pine an acceptable alternative to his initial wood choice, cedar.

On Wild Wassa and Aussie woods. Mate! There's so many great woods in your little island down there. I was in Atherton, up in Q'land and in a restaurant sided inside with some wonderfully looking planking (live edged)that had my head spinning. "Wha's that?," I asked and they told me and now I've forgotten but they continued, "It's just some stuff that grows like weeds around here. Can't cut it down fast enough" Clear, straight. Wonder what that was...

And when I was in PNG, there's a tree, that in Tok Pisin, is called "the canoe tree." Medium weight, just right for chopping out the interior of the log. And they last too.

[Alan D. Hyde]

Individual trees from the same species can behave very differently.

Those that were shaded and grew slowly may often be far stronger and more rot-resistant than those that grew rapidly.

Look at the growth-ring spacing. Ideally, you want close, vertical grain (CVG). Vertical grain means that the narrow (close) growth rings are perpendicular to your saw cut when you mill the board...

Alan