What is your goal? Do you want the best/strongest/lightest boat you can possibly build or do you just want to build a nice boat that will work well? Using the best quality materials and very careful construction techniques you can make an excellent, very light weight and very strong boat. Using decent materials and a small amount of care, you can make a very good, light weight and strong boat.

The difference between the two boats will not be night and day. The "best" built boat will not be hugely better than the average well built boat. For most people, there will be no significant difference. If you will be using the boat in some extreme manner, such as racing or playing in rock gardens it may be worthwhile to seek the very "best".

If you are more interested in a fun winter's project with a minimum of stress, you may be better served by not worrying about how to obtain an additional couple percent out of each step in the process. Start out simple. Your first boat is not going to be perfect anyway, instead of trying to get it perfect, try to get it done. While maybe not perfect, it will be very good and your next boat will be better.

> Recently there was a discussion about how to avoid delamination between
> wood and epoxy. I found suggestions about two methods: priming with
> hydroxymethylated resorcinol or using CPES. The first method will make the
> wood reddish. I don't like that because I will use Swedish spruce (Picea
> Abies) which is a pale wood. CPES has a lot of nasty solvents. I prefer
> not to use such matters. Besides I wonder if I could get it in Sweden.