: I'm planning on starting the 18' night heron in a few weeks. I've decided on
: western red cedar for the construction. Are 1" x 12" x 18'
: boards advisable for full strips or should I scarf them together out of a
: smaller say 1" x 8" x 6-10' boards? Your help would be greatly
: appreciated. I'm definately open to any dimensions. Thanks.

If you are building a boat that is 18 feet long along the center line, you will need to have boards that are longer for making the full length strips.

Those strips that go around the outside of the building forms have obviously got to be longer than the boat length, as they are taking a curved path, and not following a straight line down the center.

When building canoes with 16 foot strips you get a boat that is about 14-1/2 feet long. You lose that foot-and-a-half to the bending of the strip away from the center line. On a boat with a 36 inch beam, the center of the strip is about 18 inches to the side of the center line. Then, you need to have the strip overhang the end a bit (an inch or so) so it can be trimmed even with the other strips.

For an 18 foot kayak you would probably want a few strips that were about 20 feet long. It is hard to find, and expensive to purchase, and transport 20 foot long boards. You would probably be better off with scarphing some 10 or 12 foot boards into the length you wanted, and then ripp them into your full length strips. A 12 foot long 1x6 can be ripped into two nominal 1x3s, which can be scarphed to give you a nice 22 foot long 1x3, suitable for 5 to 7 strips.

If you get 12 foot and 10 foot boards ( 1x6 or 1x8) you can frequently rip a clear section about 3 to 4 inches wide from carefully selected pieces. Scarph these into log boards for making your long, clear, full-length pieces. the parts that were trimmed off can be ripped into additional strips. if they got to 10 or 12 feet, fine. If they are only 3 to 4 feet before you hit a bad section, then use them where youneed shorter strips, and jsut cut out the bad spots.

Hope this helps.

PGJ