Carbon Footprint of the Wooden Boat

[wizbang 13]

Re: Carbon Footprint of the Wooden Boat

Renewable boats…. Self fulfilling prophesy
renew that rotten wood every ten years

[heimlaga]

Re: Carbon Footprint of the Wooden Boat

More like every 40 years.
There are quite a few of those tarred clinker built spruce boats that are over 80 years old and afloat with more original timber than replacement timber in the hull. The oldest one I know locally to still be in regular use was built in the 1880-ies.

[Tom Jackson]

Re: Carbon Footprint of the Wooden Boat

See WoodenBoat No. 283, November/December 2021. Richard Jagels in his "Wood Technology" column on page 82 has an evaluation of life-cycle analysis, including the French comparison that someone mentioned above. It compares wood, aluminum, and fiberglass boats. It's an interesting read, and long story short, wood came out very favorably, especially for boats built with locally available species.

[Rumars]

Re: Carbon Footprint of the Wooden Boat

It is possible to build wooden boats with a rather low carbon footprints.

If I go into the our wood parcel (1,2 km from home) and cut down a few spruce trees and use my tractor to uproot some stumps for grown crooks and bring the logs to a Woodmizer band sawmill some 5 km from home and bring the timber home and sticker it the only fossil carbon emissions will be those from the chainsaw and the tractor and the sawmill. Very small amounts that is. All pats of the tree that aren't boat timber becomes either construction timber or shuttering boards or firewood. The twigs are left in the woods as fertilizer for the new trees growing up. Hardly anything goes to waste.
With those boards and crooks and some spruce saplings sawn in half for ribs and some birch for thole pins it isn't too hard to build a clinker rowboat. The only store bought materials would be nails (or rivets) and screws and a stainless steel flat bar for a keel shoe and some cotton to put between the lands. Linseed oil and tar could also be home grown but for the sake of efficiency they would be store bought.
That would make an almost entirely renewable boats built using very little natural resources and having a very small carbon footprint.

You could also borrow the neighbors horse team, float the wood to the water powered sawmill, use only treenails and caulk with moos. In a warmer location you could use an elephant to drag the tree out of the jungle, split it by hand and sew the planks with coconut rope.
I'm not kidding, I can buy wood that was processed like that if I'm prepared to fork over enough money.

As for durability, what's the problem if it's low? After all the trade has to survive somehow, the boatbuilder and boatrepairer have to eat.

[heimlaga]

Re: Carbon Footprint of the Wooden Boat

You could also borrow the neighbors horse team, float the wood to the water powered sawmill, use only treenails and caulk with moos. In a warmer location you could use an elephant to drag the tree out of the jungle, split it by hand and sew the planks with coconut rope.
I'm not kidding, I can buy wood that was processed like that if I'm prepared to fork over enough money.

As for durability, what's the problem if it's low? After all the trade has to survive somehow, the boatbuilder and boatrepairer have to eat.

Or I could bring out the old pit saw............It is sharp and ready to go but I have only needed it once.

I prefere to harvest and process boat timber the same way and at the same time as I harvest timber for other projects. With chainsaw and tractor. The other options are just not feasible in practice. "Shopping" speciality timber in the woods and having it sawn at one of the local sawmills often requires only mariginally more time than one would spend searching for and fetching sawn timber from far away. The cash cost i negible.
I have yet to build an entire boat from it though........
Last friday I found a pair of very nice gunwales inside a very slender spruce tree which had started to lean after a storm. I will put them in storage until needed.

[Dan McCosh]

Re: Carbon Footprint of the Wooden Boat

The issue with using wood as a material to build something with isn't the "carbon footprint" so much as it is what the tree cut down is replaced with. Destroying the tropical rain forest and replacing it with grasslands has a significant impact on the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. Replanting a tree with another tree negates the impact of cutting a tree down--as long as you grow new trees as fast as they are consumed.