Thread: NSW Forests booklet - Timber in Boatbuilding

Jeremy
PM is on it's way.... thank you for the offer....

Originally Posted by Aberdeen

Jeremy
PM is on it's way.... thank you for the offer....

Ditto

Mike

Emails sent.

Happy to be useful

They're good pamphlets too. Thanks mate

Richard

And THANKS from Aberdeen and the new boat to be......

PM box was full - I have made some spacenow, so if you tried to ask for the booklets and your message bounced try again.

Never expected that there would be so much interest.

Great info,

That pamphlet has been around for a long long time in different forms - it should be - it is quite a useful document.

It is amazing how much has changed - so many of those timbers are not available now. Also the gluing technology and the building of boats out of much smaller pieces of timber has changed.

The species of timber for specific jobs is a good reflection of traditional practice dating back to the 1950s or earlier.

And that is where this document is so useful. Another really useful one is the USL code on Timber boat construction - a great resource on the general construction and design of heavy displacement vessels in Australia. Excellent if you have one to repair!

MIK

I agree that things have moved on since it was last published in 1996. Are you volunteering to Forests NSW to update it?

Certainly Mik a number of the timbers have become very hard to find except from specialist suppliers like Trend Timbers in Sydney and the hardwoods can often be obtained from timberdirect.com.au. They all come for a price that reflects their scarcity and one consequence is that other timbers can be used with great advantage like WRC, oregan and paulownia (at least if they are poxed and sometimes glassed).

And as always, SA is just about the worst served when it comes to timber, because of the lack of any standing native forests. I remember my Dad telling me that the lack of ready standing timber explained the following Adelaidian curiosities (my parents and I were all born in Adelaide so this isn't a dig):

1. stobie poles
2. almost universal use of corrugated iron as a roofing material until the 1960s
3. burning of mallee roots in home fires rather than split logs.

When I worked for a bunch called Cockatoo timbers - the boss was a real timber and history buff.

Apparently Adelaide had one of the first forestry commissions in the world - they had run out of timber early in the 1800s. That's a long time ago and explains the stobie poles nicely compared to all the hardwood poles that used to be commonplace in Sydney.

For the uninitiated a stobie pole is two rolled steel C sections bolted back to back with a space where concrete is cast between the two.

Substitutes for wooden telegraph poles.

Name of the designer was Stobie. Oh, if I could be half as famous!

MIK

Originally Posted by Boatmik

Name of the designer was Stobie. Oh, if I could be half as famous!

MIK

One of the nice ironies, is that South Aust. has the lowest rate in Oz for accidents where a driver loses control of a car and slams into a roadside pole. I reckon seeing all those unforgiving looking Stobie poles warps South Ozzies' driving skills so that their reflexes automatically avoid hitting them.....

As for your fame, we are working on it. What about the man who brought the PDR to Timor Leste??

St Michael of the assumptions

MIK

I agree with Mik
A lot of those timbers are getting hard to get and not to mention the price of some of them now

Spoke with the lovely people today at Otto's Timber (Stepney SA) and chatted about a few choices.

Back to the good old Tasmanian Oak
It is one of several of the same family that often comes under the name of MESSMATE.... one timber I have read about in some of the more ancient boat building books/articles.....
Messmate - Tasmanian Oak - Australian Oak - Victorian Ash etc....

From the lenghts I have used I love the feel, the straight grain, no knots, no gum holes etc..... not to mention the wonderful colours and contrasts..
Good honest solid wood IMHO

Of course would like to have a pile of Mahogany and the like.

Originally Posted by Boatmik

Apparently Adelaide had one of the first forestry commissions in the world - they had run out of timber early in the 1800s. That's a long time ago and explains the stobie poles nicely compared to all the hardwood poles that used to be commonplace in Sydney.
MIK

Way I read it (& see it with me own two beady peepers) is that SA never had much in the way of decent millable trees. Even the grey box in the Adelaide hills is a miserable bent thing by east & west coast standards. So no gracious old timber-frame homes here. Early settlers built from stone & brick from necessity, not choice. Likewise stobie poles instead of timber poles. And short spans in roofs except for the grandest buildings where they could afford to import long timber from the eastern colonies.

On a side note, I went to a hardware while on Bribie Island the other week. Virtually no pinus crapiatus in evidence. Loads of hardwoods in all shapes & sizes. Was looking for treated pine for some fence posts for my dad. Bloke pointed me to the stand of cypress pine. Naturally rot-resistant, cheaper than treated pinus, & almost unobtainable in SA.

Made me realise (again) how its the subtle things which unsettle a person as they move from state to state..

[quote=jmk89;741440]One of the nice ironies, is that South Aust. has the lowest rate in Oz for accidents where a driver loses control of a car and slams into a roadside pole. I reckon seeing all those unforgiving looking Stobie poles warps South Ozzies' driving skills so that their reflexes automatically avoid hitting them.....
quote]


What they do is come up into the hills & find a nice tree to disturb instead. 2 in my brigade's area in the last month. Neither with serious injuries (perhaps unfortunately - both drivers were.... chemically enhanced), one hit the base of a 400mm thick Tassie blue gum hard enough to shatter it about 3M off the ground.
Sad waste of good boat-building timber and time, sorting out Richard Crania.
cheers
AJ