> Hi Paul,

> I have been looking around at the options and I have to agree that the
> chainsaw attachment looks like the best way to go.

> Thanks for the link. I am going to see what I can bolt together. - just
> what I need - an other project!!!

> A light basswood stripper with dark accents should look real nice on the
> water!

> Hank

One tree will make plenty of strips -- more than enough for a single boat. Clear, 20 foot long strips are not so easy to come by, and would command a premium price, but I'm sure you would give us a discount.

You might consider selling a few planks, or already cut strips, to recapture some of your costs for the sawmill equipment. Or, find someone with strips from some darker wood, and swap a few with them. You would both benefit, and the only cost would be shipping.

If you are going to turn those logs into strips, and only into strips, you would want to cut them in a particular manner, which I believe is called quartersawing. After the logs are quartered you have 4 pieces. Each piece looks a triangle with 2 straight sides, and the third side is rounded. The straight sides are at righ angles to each other. What you want to do is take a piece, sur it through your saw so that you cut a plank parallel to one of the flat sides, then flip your remaining log section by 90 degrees and cut a plank parallel to the second flat face. You keep flipping the log section, alternating the faces that you cut.

This does not give you a lot of wide boards, you get more waste, and it is time consuming to do all those flips, so commercial lumbermills don't cut a lot of wood in this fashion, but it should yield a lot of planks that will be ideal for woodstrips.

While you are at it, consider the idea of cutting some wider boards, thick enough to turn into Greenland style paddles. These are your logs, think about how you can best utilize the wood before you cut it all. You can cut them at any angle to get the best grain direction for the maximum strength for any project, or for the best bending should you decide to steam and bend a few for doing the coaming for instance.

Hope this helps.

Paul G. Jacobson