Thread: Starting Goat Island build In West Virginia

Epoxy within the USA is much easier. I think a lot of aero guys use one called RAK?

Also check Duckworks for that sort of stuff. They have a lot of the other consumables too. Probably a lot is fairly competitive with big box stores. But they know the products they sell are best of type for price/reliability.

I'm going to drag Paul Helbert into this if he'll come!

MIK

Hi John,

MIK Storer sent me a note and heads up about your planned GIS build. I found some descent WRC at Martin's Native Lumber in Dayton, VA, but had to look through a lot of knotty stuff to find it. Kenny Martin, the owner, told me that if we'd give him a little advance warning he could get a much better, clear grade in on a future order, with no extra transportation charges. He knows that I usually don't buy very much at a time and is okay with small orders, but we could probably help out by lumping orders. Dave Gentry lives near Timberville, VA, and will probably be needing more WRC before long, as I know he bought all that was worth getting at Monger's in Harrisonburg, about a year ago.

Dan Blickenstaff sells some nice paulownia at his location just a few miles out of Haggarstown, MD. I sail, from time to time at Mt. Storm and live near Broadway, VA. With the new highway I can cut through Greenland Gap and get there in well under two hours. I would be happy to meet you and to help any way I can. Also, Bob Richards, at Corliss, WV has some good lumber connections, too, but that's probably twice the distance.

I don't check here regularly, so e-mail works best: [email protected]

Alright fella's. I found a source of doug fir close to me. It is quarter sawn rough cut 2x6 for 9.50 a linear foot. Is this a good or decent price?

I have to say no. I just grabbed a 10' 2x6 Doug Fir board from Home Depot yesterday. Typical construction grade premium, nothing special, for $6.54. For what you quoted, it better be super-ooper-duper premium, with wicked tight super straight grain, clear as water, and will make you a latte after it cuts itself to size.

You've got to have a better option than $9.50 per foot. For the whole board, go for it. But for the foot? OUch!

Where are you that a Home Depot or box store carries doug fir? My friend that owns a lumberyard quoted me around 8 bucks for a 10 foot board, but when he went to order it, there was none available. Crazy!

Originally Posted by wvjohn

Where are you that a Home Depot or box store carries doug fir? My friend that owns a lumberyard quoted me around 8 bucks for a 10 foot board, but when he went to order it, there was none available. Crazy!

Northern NJ. Almost all the dimensional lumber here is DF. All the 2-bys, 4x4 and 6x6 posts in all lengths. I think even the pressure treated lumber is DF. HD, Lowes, 84 Lumber (regional?) all carry it.

We also have a bit of "White Wood" for studs (especially 2x3?) and furring. That seems to be pine of some sort. Lots of very small knots, but quite straight. Then there's the whole section of 1-by boards that are mostly Yellow Pine, a section of Radiata (milled, finished, and imported from New Zealand and priced by the piece, not the foot) and a hardwood section which here equates to Red Oak, Poplar (Tulip), and White Maple.

I have a nice local small business lumber yard nearby the specializes in recovered/salvaged wood. But they also get stock from mills when they can make a good bulk buy. I went to them because they had a large stock of clear straight Eastern White Pine at about $0.40/foot. I substituted the WRC in the plans with this.

Keep up the hunt! I think you'll be happier in the end if you know you made the best choices available (balancing cost, performance, and schedule).

I had to travel 50 miles, but I found Doug Fir. The Home Depot, and Lowes in Winchester, Va. had a good bit of it. I must live in a dead spot. My local Lowes had none. I actually called a big supplier in Pennsylvania Friday, Babcock Lumber, (they supply a lot of the Mom and Pop lumber yards) and got a speech on how the box stores are buying up and dictating what lumber is available, and how they had no doug fir.

The d-fir I found was not the best stuff, but I found the best wood in the 4x4's. The 2x12 were crap with grain that looked like the tree's parents got drunk and mated with their cousin to produce mongoloid trees that some crossed eyed logger cut down and sold to Home Depot cause no one else wanted it! Total cost- about a hundred dollars for 3- 4x4x8 df, 6- 2x4x8 df, and 3 1x10x8 cedar boards. I'm going to cut out the knots and scarf me up some lumber. I think it's worth the money I saved.

Now, gotta ask a question. Yes always a ?, maybe two!

1) I have no idea what kind of cedar i found is. It has little knots and straight grain, but man is it soft. Is cedar supposed to be so soft? I can take my fingernail nail and really gouge it. How well would this hold up over time? Will it start looking beat up over time of things bumping into it?

2) I found some good looking 2x4's that had tight rings, very few and small knots. It is stamped white fir. Anyone have a clue if this is good stuff? I bought 4 of them cause they were only 3.31 a board.

Drunken incestuous trees... gotta love 'em!

I can't speak to varieties of cedar. But consider that all the wood going into the build is to be saturated with epoxy that will cure solid. And whatever dings you do collect can be classified as patina!

Good catch on the DF. I won't do the math, but it looks like you paid a reasonable price for the lot. I found a nice 4x4 and grabbed it before I knew what it would be used for. Eventually I ripped it this way and that to create both inwales. And there's still a very nice 8' remnant that might supply next year's super boom.

The white wood can supply piece-parts like the seat cleats and stringers if you rip the 2x4s into 3/4" x 3/4" strips. Or maybe the inwale spacers?

Now I'm off to YouTube to see if there are any videos of trees producing the unfortunate lumber you've encountered...

Originally Posted by wvjohn

1) I have no idea what kind of cedar i found is. It has little knots and straight grain, but man is it soft. Is cedar supposed to be so soft? I can take my fingernail nail and really gouge it. How well would this hold up over time? Will it start looking beat up over time of things bumping into it?

I used rough cut Western Red Cedar which is stocked at the local big box (either Lowes or HD, can't ever remember which one). The stuff is very soft, easily dented with a fingernail. It hardens up a fair bit when epoxy coated but it is still pretty easy to dent. If the dent is deep enough it cracks the epoxy coating. I have a couple of those that need attention. So it would be nice to use something a bit harder but it's not a big deal and the advantage of the cedar is light weight and it looks really nice.

I was about to write all the same things that Simon did, but repetition would be silly.

Originally Posted by wvjohn

Is cedar supposed to be so soft? I can take my fingernail nail and really gouge it. How well would this hold up over time? Will it start looking beat up over time of things bumping into it?

This is the same experience that I am having with my cedar (I think mine is Spanish Cedar). It is very soft, if knocked or handled carelessly it is easy to dent. I haven't coated any of mine yet so I don't know how much improvement there is after coating with epoxy.

Cedar is a soft wood and, yes, it dents easily. But it is light and it is strong.

I used Western Red Cedar on the frames, dagger-board case framing, dagger-board staves (with hardwood leading and trailing edges), rudder (again, hardwood leading and trailing edges) and inwale spacers. The softness of WRC really doesn't seem to be an issue. Where are you using cedar where it is going to be banged around and dented?

My current boom is made of White Cedar - again light and strong - and while I'm not completely pleased with the stiffness of this boom, it is serviceable. The boom is also more likely to get banged around and dented than the other cedar parts in the boat but, hey, if it doesn't hold up, I'll build another boom with different materials.

Mainly thinking about the chinelog. I figure it's going to take a beating as far as things knocking into it. I feel when I build a boat it's more about craftsmanship and art, but it still has to be functional. If sailing and being on the water was my priority, I would buy a small sail boat and mission accomplished. That brings me glassing the hull. From what I've read on here so far, three coats of epoxy is enough, glassing only adds weight. I've also read where builders have noticed that with dings and dents the interior floor epoxy and hull bottom gets compromised and water gets to the wood causing dark stains. So it leaves me wondering, should i glass these to protect the finish i've worked so hard to make beautiful and add weight or accept the wear in the name of performance, always a trade off!

Dings will happen. Can't be helped. Cedar will actually discolor worse than plywood when it gets wet. It's just what cedar does. So you can expect to acquire a certain number of small dark spots over time.

But, in reality, it's not that big a deal. As you are building, each tiny imperfection seems HUGE. Then it gets hidden in the totality of the beautiful boat and seems much less of an issue. Then, when you start using the boat, the dings and scratches and, eventually, patches (yes, I've got a couple) just become part of the fabric of the boat. Each has a story to tell and is part of what makes your boat unique.

Examples: My boat has along scratch in the varnish on the starboard side which happened the very first time the boat hit the water. My son was rowing (sail rig not done at the time) and shipped the oars a little too aggressively. And there is a gouge in the port gunwale cap halfway between bulkheads 2 and 3 from the very first time the boat sailed. My daughter and I scraped a raised outboard as we went through the anchorage. Both will get covered over with new varnish eventually. But in the meantime, they remind me of time on the water with my children.

I haven't noticed that the chine logs get beaten up more than anything else. The cedar really is tougher with some epoxy on it.

As for the bottom, I pull up on a mostly sandy beach with some embedded rocks. The bottom gets scratched. But the boat is so light that the scratches aren't bad. Very, very rarely go through the epoxy. The skids take most of the abuse, and the very front corner, under the stem, which is covered with fabric anyway. I certainly haven't seen anything bleed through from the bottom.

In fact, the most abused parts of my boat right now are the floor behind the middle seat, where sandy feet and bottoms grind on the varnish, and the upper part of the mast, which picked up some awful dings while trailering. Neither would benefit much from more fabric.