Anyone know if eastern/northern white cedar is any better for strip building hulls than the more typical western red? If it has superior qualities of flexibility as I've heard claimed, is it worth the pursuit here on the west coast? I'm looking at a custom hull with a bit more compound curving than normal.

Doug

Strip-built Nordkapp?

There was a deal on pre-cut and B&C routered WR cedar strips on used Victoria recently - trying to get the cost down from the asking price (might be gone now). If that falls through I may go for alternate species and plane, rather than B&C, so I'm worried about the malleability. B&C is quick but can leave gaps if you aren't careful - and I couldn't live with epoxy fill! As for design, the deck will be mine. The hull will be something Nordkapp based. Need it for seaworthiness in big, open seas with enough volume for future Alaska paddling. There are other hull designs out there but I guess I know the Nordy is one I have had a difficult time trying to kill myself in - it always, always gets me home despite my best efforts to do otherwise. May have to do something different for a shorter playboat - a stripper Delphinesq with huge overbuild qualities. Not sure about buying a new boat like a Sterling Reflection for playboating though (promising design) - got teens to help get through post secondary and if Yvonne loses her fight, it's gonna be tight around here - and sad. Building a kayak would be a salve to some of life's ills.

I could do up a killer stripper based on the Maelstrom Vaag but would have to test the boat in conditions more first - and contact the designer for a one off self-built copy. He doesn't want to make avaliable extra-build quality options, so I'm screwed even if I did have the bucks. I kill kayaks and always will because even though I'm taking a break from extreme stuff, I know once I have the right boat, well...

Next step is high quality heat gun, a low-profle PorterCable Radom Orbital, and some better planes from Lee Valley - and start getting some wood. Sold my Hitachi Planer Jointer Combo Model F1000A, picked up that corny little Delta jointer and still need a small portable planer. Makita and DeWalt get good reviews.

Doug

I miss that 20,000 rpm A/C motor whirrrrrr!!!!



A stripper with a rudder...just seams like a tradgedy.

Here's the one I'd like:

http://toolguyd.com/2009/11/porter-cabl ... r-preview/



I have the taller PC 5" R/O and a PC right-angle 6" R/O sander, as well as a well-amped Milwakee 5" R/O that is also tall. Cedar is so soft I think the low-profile version might be better for control. I may sell the other three even though they are variable speed.

Doug

Can't find much on western red cedar versus eatern white and western yellow. I did see a nice kayak on-line done in bamboo! I have worked with yellow cedar but is was heavier. I'll figure it out.

DL

Doug,
I've got some yellow cedar left over from the SOF build and if you're interested I could cut you up some pieces to test out. See if they'd work for what you want to do.

Doug

I have built complete kayaks from yellow cedar. It is heavier and more dense since it grows slower therefore it has a tighter grain. The downside is that the grain is often so tight, you can not see small swirls where small knots would have been, and when you go to plane it for fairing, you may very well tear out a piece. Eastern white cedar is hard to find locally in long lengths. So with red cedar so abundant in long lengths, I don't know why you would choose any other wood. Red comes in such a variety of colours from dark brown to almost white depending on new growth or heartwood. Yellow is great for accents.

With the sander, I have the low profile one that was supposed to last longer since it had no brushes, but it had to be rebuilt in less than one year (luckily under warranty). All my other PC sanders lasted well (I go through one every two years with the amount of sanding I do).

Hey Doug

In my limited experience (2 boats) I found a block plane got the wood surfaces pretty fair, then sandpaper stuck to a home-made fairing board finished the job quite nicely. The only time I used the ROS was for some of the interior surfaces, and to prep the final coat of epoxy before varnishing....

So... what's so tragic about a rudder?

Good advice so far.
WRC is light, has multi colours and will bend to just about anything you want for a sea yak - and if it won't, cut it thinner and add more glass on the inside. It's just wood.
-Forget the b&c hassle, you'll do better work, potentially more coordinated and more quickly without.
-Take care to lay the strips with a flush top surface so that the strips themselves act like fairing battens and you just have to knock off a fraction of each edge to 'fair'.
-Choose large initial stock and keep track of all the strip orientations and then lay them out in a preplanned (and tested) geometric order to get a fine, simple coordinated base.
-If you are a rookie to this, for your base, choose one single stripping pattern and stick to it no matter how difficult, possibly using smaller equally distributed and spaced filler pieces to keep pattern on track and do not change direction even if a gun is held to your head. Remember that footballs are for sport, not art - and concentric eyes in the middle of simple curves or flats conflict with their own world and almost invariably with their kayak universe.

And if you get into this for another, I'm sure that Reg Lake (Reflection co-originator with Sterling and a strip builder extroadinaire as well) would be flattered at the thought of putting out plans. (the Reflection naming came from an email conversation with Reg where he mentioned that the hull was derived from cutting the illusion hull bow off and adding a 2nd stern section to act as the bow also - as it originally surfed so well backwards. I mentioned it should be therefore be called the 'Reflective Illusion', heh heh. He liked just 'Reflection')

Anyway, you finally seem close to doing this after all! Good luck and have fun.

(ps-To get it to your usual 100 lb boat, are you going to add lead or 50 layers of glass? heh heh)

Ian,

Beautiful wood working on your deck!

It was after seeing Ian's boat at the last WCP get together that I had hope once again of building one day. I'd seen a few strippers at the Ladysmith meet and was NOT impressed with most strippers I saw (too plain, boring brown, looked like a plug with varnish!), and the few that were nice - too nice and I'd not want to take them out kayaking after all that inlay work. Yet Ian's stripper wasn't overwrought with artsy-fartsy woodworking intricacy but rather, the integrity of his work and the personal touches were so well realized in the final product that I knew I had to make a stripper one day.

Doug

Well, your rudder was an exception. Most look like an afterthought. And, rudders never are a nice thing where the design would normally have an upturned stern, wood boat or FG.

DL

I called Westwind today in Sidney; they would have to make inquiries to try and procure long lengths of yellow cedar. Thanks for the offer. I can get short lengths here. I don't mind some extra weight if the cedar is stronger. I understand the main strength comes from extra glass though.

Doug

I would not recommend using Alaska Yellow Cedar extensively in a stripper. I used about a dozen strips on the boat I am just glassing now. It is nice for the highlight and contrast, but as Rod said, it is heavier, harder and prone to tearouts. It is significantly harder to bend than red cedar of the same dimensions, so depending on the boat shape you are building, you may be making your life more difficult than need be. If all that was not enough, I don't like the smell of the AYC, while the red cedar is quite pleasant.

Hey Doug, thanks for the compliments - glad to hear you're about to get into it. I hope I get to see the results some time.

Like Mick says, have fun, and don't forget "that footballs are for sport, not art - and concentric eyes in the middle of simple curves or flats conflict with their own world and almost invariably with their kayak universe." Well, duh....!

Something i've been dreaming of
http://etiennemuller.com/northstar/pages/0045.html

http://etiennemuller.com/northstar/pages/0043.html

Thanks Ian...I didn't mean to bring out the butter from the fridge and smear it all over you; it's just that you stripper was so personalized without being ostentatious, that it really left an impression. I'd love to do a nice stripper and an SOF before too long; I'm not sure how much re-purposing of my kayaking "career" I want to do but I do know it will include something more creative that just getting thrashed out there all the time - which I do thoroughly enjoy. Thanks for the support.

Doug