Lumber questions
 

I've been perusing some old boat plans, and have a question regarding the
sizes of boards. "Back in the day" when some of these plans were written,
lumber was actually the size it was sold to be. Now, a 1x4 may be as little
as 3 1/4 in. wide (as measured at local Lowe's home improvement center).
How does one compensate for this when building from old plans?

I was also apalled by the prices for REALLY knotty boards labelled as "top
choice". By the way, what is "white wood" anway??? Is good lumber really
that scarce? About 20 years ago I worked in home construction during the
summers, and even the cheapest boards we used as bracing were longer,
straighter, and a whole lot clearer than the junk I saw at Lowe's.

Russ B

Lumber questions
 

Hi

"Russ B" skrev i en meddelelse
...

By the way, what is "white wood" anway???

Sab wood ?
The outher rings of quite a few species are useless for boat boulding , where
others species like spruce , you acturly prefere the sab (sap) wood .
With Oak the white wood will be the sab wood that you cut off in boat building.
Acturly chemical wood protection, was kind of invented to make the whole tree
usefull including the useless sabwood.
P.C.
( don't hope that word have a particular other meaning ,as with english as
second language I would not know)

Lumber questions
 

Uhhh "sab wood" is actually "sap wood" and sap wood is typically considered
the "juvenile" wood that makes up the outer "skin" of a tree (the layers
just under the bark) whose purpose is to carry sap to the canopy. Heartwood
is found nearer the center of the tree and does not carry wood and as such,
tends to be far more stable and darker in colour. "typical" hardwood found
in boats/fine furniture is heartwood. Regardless, that's not what "white
wood" is.

White wood is a mix of whatever softwood the mill happens to be running at
that time. Pine, fir, hemlock, balsam etc....all are classified as white
wood. As for boat building/repairing and Lowes/Home Depot, don't mix them.
The lumber you get at any big-box will simply not be suitable for marine
use. Actually, it's rarely suitable for anything other than fence building
and even that's questionable..

If you need to purchase wood for marine repairs, do so from a reputable
supplier of product designed/procured for that purpose. If none are in your
neighborhood, there are many good sources via the mail. Here's a great place
to start.

http://www.woodfinder.com/

Good luck
Rob

"P.C." wrote in message
k...
Hi

"Russ B" skrev i en meddelelse
...

By the way, what is "white wood" anway???

Sab wood ?
The outher rings of quite a few species are useless for boat boulding ,
where
others species like spruce , you acturly prefere the sab (sap) wood .
With Oak the white wood will be the sab wood that you cut off in boat
building.
Acturly chemical wood protection, was kind of invented to make the whole
tree
usefull including the useless sabwood.
P.C.
( don't hope that word have a particular other meaning ,as with english as
second language I would not know)

Lumber questions
 

Hi

"Rob Stokes" skrev i en meddelelse
s.com...

Pine, fir, hemlock, balsam etc....

Ok I se, but each specie have specific ability , Oak is not best suieted for a
boat deck and Spruce , or fastgrown Douglas also in specific use be the best
specie for that.
My argument is, that I rather se a mixed Ash , Oak forest mixed other leaf
trees, but to do so, Chipwood sheets from fast grown forest groth is the best
protection of the species left. From a Design stand point, things just get
easyer with worse sheet than Douglas, ------- still Chipwood can be produced
from straw ,producing just the right material for Digital use, sheet material.
Protect the forest ,produce what technology provide and this reduce the demand
for Timber. Today Timbers are all about strait frame and sheet material anyway
so why not protect the good use of the Forest we humans have. Still
Boatbuilding is not the only craft, that made profit of 3D calculations
Carpenters even would say a boat, with crossing members of wood that expand and
scrink, must not be done as in a boat, ------------------- sort of the
difference between a boatbuilder and a Carpenter. Guess you can be both . Still
a Boatbuilder must have a different Vision doing boat hulls in wood, that's
nothing but planks, ribs and nails.
Still if industries can't se the direction technology is providing the Oak and
Ash will suffer so will the Redwood and the tropical , on Borneo in the 30'
there was 4000 species of "Mahogony" , we boatbuilders was responsable to know
what from what.
Still if anyone want to make money today, it's out of the Pyramides, and se a
promise of a bright future, jobs and progress.
Due new obvious technology, protecting homeland Forest with top technology .
3D-H provide a nice cutting edge technology to provide 3D structures from sheet
material please follow the links and you wioll se that with the options in
Digital production and standard sheet materials , you can still find new
designs. Highrise like WTC one and two proberly would not be rebuild in the
same way, but if what is build must point to the future, it is my oppinion ,that
the Design must some way carry this promise of a bright future, protecting the
Oak and Ash trees is enough reson for me, Anyway please check a few links if
3D-H and direct link production methods sound interesting ;

http://www.designcommunity.com/scrapbook/2663.html
http://www.designcommunity.com/scrapbook/2648.html
http://www.designcommunity.com/scrapbook/2649.html
http://www.designcommunity.com/scrapbook/2647.html

Now if you ask the modern paralell for a small house ,in the framework 3D-H
provide as an assembly for a Cabin at a third the cost, four times as strong, in
steel sheet assembly framework full scale ,an assembly house if this is what you
want but be aware it cheap and good ;

http://www.designcommunity.com/scrapbook/2573.html

Click her ;
http://www.designcommunity.com/scrapbook/2577.html

P.C.
Reson Dinusaurs get rusty is that they are made out of steel.

Lumber questions
 

The good wood you and I remember from years ago was from big trees.
Those have mostly been cut down years ago, and the rest are in
protected areas so our grandkids will believe us when we tell them
that we had spruce and fir trees ten feet in diameter. Clear-cutting
practices leave us with a lot of small trees (the larger stuff is
either shipped to Japan or made into plywood), and small trees are
full of knots throughout their length, unlike the really tall ones
that had no branches in their lower reaches. Shoot, I've seen
two-by-fours that had bark on all four corners. We're getting
desperate.
In aircraft homebuilding, we buy wood from the aircraft suppliers.
It's really expensive, and getting worse all the time. Most builders
are switching to composite or aluminum. For boats, I have sought out
the smaller, friendly lumberyards (try the small towns) and those
fellas will often let you pick through the stuff to find better wood.
For my son's Squirt, we have found decent spruce and pine in
two-by-eights, since they have to come from larger trees, and we've
been able to rip them up to get the clear lengths we need. Some wooden
airplanes are still built this way.
There has been a "synthetic" wood developed that shows promise. By
cutting trees into long, slender slivers, like long toothpicks, and
laying them into moulds and adding waterproof binders, a clear, strong
(but a bit heavier) lumber is produced. I haven't seen it yet, but
there has been debate among aircraft homebuilders about trying it.
It's disadvantages are the weight, a tendency to fail suddenly when
overstressed, and the cost, although I imagine it would be much
cheaper than aircraft-grade spruce.

Dan

Lumber questions
 

Most of the boats I liked were carvel planked.. What I had in mind was
something like the older pre-fiberglass Lightning or something similar. I
found an older Lightning woodie with a rotten deck and chine log, but the
rest was in pretty good shape other than a couple of cracked planks.
RB



Dave Fleming wrote in message
...
I've been perusing some old boat plans, and have a question regarding
the
sizes of boards. "Back in the day" when some of these plans were
written,
lumber was actually the size it was sold to be. Now, a 1x4 may be as
little
as 3 1/4 in. wide (as measured at local Lowe's home improvement center).
How does one compensate for this when building from old plans?

I was also apalled by the prices for REALLY knotty boards labelled as
"top
choice". By the way, what is "white wood" anway??? Is good lumber
really
that scarce? About 20 years ago I worked in home construction during
the
summers, and even the cheapest boards we used as bracing were longer,
straighter, and a whole lot clearer than the junk I saw at Lowe's.

Russ B

First off, are you going to build in ***traditional carvel planked***
or ***cold moulded***?
Answer that and perhaps some reasonable answers will be posted.
So far all I have seen whilst ***good intentioned ***I am sure,is
just conjecture
Not to sound like a wise arse, yeah it does seem that way, don't it?
:-)
But the more specifics you provide, the better the replies will be to
your particular question.

PAX


http://pages.sbcglobal.net/djf3rd
Tales of a Boat Builder Apprentice

Lumber questions
 

What are the dates on these plans? If they are after 1940 (or so) they
are (most likely) for "nominal sized" lumber... i.e. a 2x4 is 1.5-1.625
x 3.5-3.625.

As others have stated, good wood just doesn't exist (or isn't allowed to
be cut) anymore. Something to do with depletion of natural resources.
If you take your time, you can find good boards. I've had to go through
10 bundles of 1x6 (about 100 boards) to find 6 good boards but they are
there.

Ed

Russ B wrote:
I've been perusing some old boat plans, and have a question regarding the
sizes of boards. "Back in the day" when some of these plans were written,
lumber was actually the size it was sold to be. Now, a 1x4 may be as little
as 3 1/4 in. wide (as measured at local Lowe's home improvement center).
How does one compensate for this when building from old plans?

I was also apalled by the prices for REALLY knotty boards labelled as "top
choice". By the way, what is "white wood" anway??? Is good lumber really
that scarce? About 20 years ago I worked in home construction during the
summers, and even the cheapest boards we used as bracing were longer,
straighter, and a whole lot clearer than the junk I saw at Lowe's.

Russ B

Lumber questions
 

woodfinder.com and woodfinder.net both map to the same site.

Forgot about poplar being in that "white wood" mix. I guess it all depends
on what's local and cheap.

Rob


"Backyard Renegade" wrote in message
m...
"Rob Stokes" wrote in message
ws.com...
Uhhh "sab wood" is actually "sap wood" and sap wood is typically
considered
the "juvenile" wood that makes up the outer "skin" of a tree (the layers
just under the bark) whose purpose is to carry sap to the canopy.
Heartwood
is found nearer the center of the tree and does not carry wood and as
such,
tends to be far more stable and darker in colour. "typical" hardwood
found
in boats/fine furniture is heartwood. Regardless, that's not what "white
wood" is.

White wood is a mix of whatever softwood the mill happens to be running
at
that time. Pine, fir, hemlock, balsam etc....all are classified as white
wood. As for boat building/repairing and Lowes/Home Depot, don't mix
them.
The lumber you get at any big-box will simply not be suitable for marine
use. Actually, it's rarely suitable for anything other than fence
building
and even that's questionable..

If you need to purchase wood for marine repairs, do so from a reputable
supplier of product designed/procured for that purpose. If none are in
your
neighborhood, there are many good sources via the mail. Here's a great
place
to start.

http://www.woodfinder.com/

Good luck
Rob

You mean, Woodfinder.net don't you. They are on my servers..
Up around here Poplar is called "White Wood" no good for boats...
Scotty from SmallBoats.com

Lumber questions
 

I have noted over the years that the folks in the Eastern US and
Eastern Canada find spruce, pine and fir to be rather rare and
expensive, while they have an abundance of hardwoods like oak, ash,
walnut and so on, so much that they use it for firewood. Out here in
the West, we burn the softwoods and can't get the hardwoods at any
decent price. Many of us, when building boats or furniture, have cut
up hardwood pallets to get the small bits of hardwood we need. We
can't feature Eastern factories using wood for pallets that we pay $10
a board foot for.
When I was a kid my father worked in a sawmill, and any amount of
clear softwood could be had just by picking through any pile of
lumber. Those days are gone (sob) and now I cringe when I look at
the basement structure of some old house, with all that clear fir. Out
here in Alberta there are numerous huge aircraft hangars built during
WWII on training airfields, made of fir beams measuring something like
6" by 24" and 12"x12", and sixty feet long. Clear, for the most part.
Old grain elevators are being torn down, and the lumber (laminated
2x6, 2x8, 2x10) reclaimed for fancy flooring and window frames in
upscale houses. Lumber cut from trees in the 1920s when they were
still taller than Paul bunyan.
In the 1970s I sold heavy truck parts, and a firm in India made
the best cast-iron brake drums we'd ever seen. North American
manufacturers made them of softer iron (which wore out much sooner)
and stored them outside so they got all rusty and filthy. The Indians
wrapped them in plastic, with dessicant capsules to keep them dry, and
boxed them two to a crate made of TEAK, believe it or not. It's junk
over there. Some of it found its way into my furniture projects.

Dan

Lumber questions
 

"Russ B" writes:

Snip some observations.

About 20 years ago I worked in home construction during the
summers, and even the cheapest boards we used as bracing were longer,
straighter, and a whole lot clearer than the junk I saw at Lowe's.

Maybe this will put it in perspective.

I'm building a fiberglass boat. I also buy a lot of construction grade
lumber from Lowes, Home Depot, etc.

I use this lumber to build forms for the fiberglass.

It is a one shot deal.

Think back to your days in construction and the wooden forms required for
concrete.

Same-o, same-o.

You go to there garbage store to buy garbage materials for a garbage job.

You want to build a boat, that's not garbage is used.

You buy full size quality rough lumber such as Honderous Mahogany, finish it
as req'd, and like the gambler, you don't cry when it's time to settle up.

HTH