Suitable Timber - Skin on Frame Greenland Kayak

[lesgoldmann]

Hi,

I'm making a SOF kayak using the Chris Cunningham book. Does anyone have any suggestion on suitable Australian timbers? He suggests Spruce, Pine, Yellow or White Cedar, he is not a fan of western red cedar suggesting it is soft and short grained.

The timber needs to be fairly knot free, must be reasonably supple as it needs to bend around forms and ideally not too heavy. The timber used to make the ribs must steam bend well.

Any suggestions welcome.

Cheers,

Les

[KJL38]

The one I've seen was built with western red cedar for the gunwales, keel and stringers with tasmanian oak for the ribs. I hope that helps.

[anewhouse]

I built mine from Paulownia, but I used the Tom Yost technique so I didn't have to bend ribs.

The Paulownia is about 20% lighter than WRC. It is a bit soft for some applications, but seems to be doing the job on the SOF. It has lasted for over a year and a couple of hundred kilometres at least, but as I still have the temporary 0.1mm thick clear vinyl skin, it hasn't been tested in the surf.

[Jezupatree]

I have a partially completed ( well partially started!) SOF greenland kayak in the garage, in fact 2- a baidarka with gunwhales of western red cedar, inspired by Wolfgang Brink's book; the gunwhales were super fragile and snapped to bits before I got much work done at all. Bad choice of material! I still have the beginnings of a greenland kayak which i intend on finishing, for this project I was hoping to use an australian timbers like yourself, but with the advice of Brewery Creek boat shop in Vancouver i settled on douglas fir- or Oregon as it is often called here.. just selected them from the pile down at the local hardware! So far have only doweled the gunwhales together and cut all the rib mortises, but hopefully soon i'll get a chance to spend some more time on her. Interested to hear your progress!