Mike, sorry to hear you are burdened by a stockpile of hardwoods littering your place. We'll be happy to come over and help you get rid of it

: I would like to build a boat with a hull made from black locust and a deck
: made of Cherry, walnut, white ash, and osage.

Sounds like a nice color combination, I assume you've got some good ideas onw whaat design you want to create. Send us some pictures as it comes together.

: I checked Hoadley's
: "Understanding Wood", and it would appear that I can more or
: less simulate 1/4" Cedar with 3/16" hardwood. The 3/16"
: hardwood would have approximately the same weight and strength as the
: 1/4" cedar, and probably better durability. Has anyone had much
: experience with hardwood? Any problems? Bonding okay with epoxy/glass?

3 questions here , answering in reverse order: Bonding is mostly OK. Problems sem to be with oily woods, which should not be a problem with the woods youdescribe. Cherry is known to darken as it ages. I've used red oak as gunwales on a canoe, and the palns called for the gunwales to be varnished. They rotted in 5 years, but the rest of the boat is fine. Next time I'll use epoxy resin on the wood to seal and waterproof it.

Now, about the size of the stips: 1/4 inch strips may well be the equivalent of 3/16 th inch strips of tougher woods like cherry and oak, but many kayaks are built of 3/16 th inch cedar, and even 1/8th inch cedar strips. You might want to go a bit thinner, too. You could go to 1/8 inch, or split the difference between 3/16 and 1/8th by going for 5/32 strips.

If you go with thinner strips you'll want the aligning feature of bead and cove edges. You cna use the same cutters as for 1/4 inch strips, you'll just need to adjust your router/shaper so as to center the cutters on the width of the strips.

Cedar sands very easily, so the square shape of the strips is rather esy to round over. If you go with thinner strips you'll have less material to work with, so you might worry about excessive sanding to round and fair the outside of the hull. You can reduce the sanding requirement by using narrower strips. Consider using quite a few 1/2 inch wide by 1/8 th inch thick strips in areas where theere is a good deal of curvature. After you put the bead and cove edge on these the exposed wood will be a bit less than 1/2 inch, and the strips should fit the curvature of the hull and deck very closely, so you'll need to do very little sanding to fair them. For flatter areas you can use wider strips, of course.

Look carefully at stapleless construction methods. If would be a shame to poke a lot of tiny holes in your hardwoods.

Best of luck on your project

PGJ