Not board yet!

Posted on by David

I’m going to take a moment to talk about the lumber I will be using.

Cedar- The kit’s lumber (or planks as we call it in the boat building business) is primarily made up of clear (knot and blemish-free and very straight), premium Western Red and Alaskan Yellow cedar. After I placed the order for the boat, I talked with CLC, sent them a couple of pictures for design ideas and they came up with the ratio of dark to light wood. It was suggested that I buy an extra bundle of Red cedar because of my design. More intricate and specialized designs can cause waste so I wanted to make sure I would have enough to finish.

This is the red cedar laid out. The picture doesn’t quite show the differences but there can be quite a bit of color variations even within the same tree. Each of the groups came bundled as they were cut from the same board. I kept the strips grouped then numbered each group to keep the shades and variations together.
This is a bad picture of the yellow cedar. There is less variation in yellow cedar but I still organized and numbered the strips.
Here you can see the bead-and-cove milling of the strips. The bead-and-cove edges allow the strips to fit very tight and go around the curves of the boat.

Walnut- You can get bead-and-cove walnut from CLC. But considering the weight (walnut can weigh 30% more than cedar) I did not order any. My design would only be using small 1/8″ feature strips so milled strips would not be economical. Instead, I used a piece of 3/4″ lumber left over from a previous project ( my daughters wedding candle “shelf”). I ripped 1/8″ strips about 5′ long.

This is a beautiful piece of clear walnut.
This is the ripped walnut strips I will use. All of these strips will be used for feature or accent so I will cut each of these strips to 1/4″ wide and set the pieces on end

Ash- If you recall from a previous post, I decided to use a little ash as feature lines. Ash, like walnut can weight 30% more so judicious use is called for. Ash, Green ash in this case is very strong and bends well. That’s why it’s used in some furniture construction. For the boat, I wanted a very white feature strip and ash holds it’s color better than cedar. The yellow cedar looks white unfinished but turns yellow when epoxied and glassed.

The ash is from a tree that was planted in my front yard in 2002. Green ash were all the landscaping rage in the 80’s and 90’s but started to become a problem about 8-10 years ago with the Emerald Ash borer. And those little bugers got my tree real good.

I had a service cut down the tree and dig out the stump but kept two trunk sections. A trip to a local sawyer produced 1″ thick boards that have been stacked and drying in the basement. I knew I’d eventually build something with the lumber but certainly not a kayak. I still have quite a bit so maybe a coffee table is still in the future

This is the rough-sawn Green ash I am using.
These strips are a bit wider, almost 7/8″ but will also be cut into 1/4″ thick strips and placed on end to match the 1/4″ thickness of the cedar strips