: . . . I am building a
: Night Herron (18'), how important is full length lumber. I realize all
: pieces will not need to be full length. But how important is it?

Not important at all.

You will find a certain convenience in having a few full length strips, EVEN IF THEY ARE OF SCRAP MATERIALS as you can use these to set up the sheer lines, establish the alignment of your forms, and as starters for your first REAL row of GOOD strips. Four to seven full-length strips should be more than enough to get you started. After that you'll find that working with shorter lengths (5 to 12 feet) is not only easier, but fast.

To help with staggering the joints I would pick up a long strips and let it run way past the end of the boat, cut off the excess (leaving a stub of at least 4 inches that I'd later trim to the profile of the bow or stern) and then I'd use that excess piece to start the next row of strips.

Here is an example of how that works with an 18 foot boat and 12 foot strips: Working from stern to bow in this example, your first row starts with a strip hanging about 18 inches off the stern. This lets the other end of the strip end at the middle of the form that is roughly 10 feet from the stern. Notice that 10 feet and 18 inches do not add up to 12 feet, but I'm assuming two things here: You will trim off a few inches from the ends of the strips to give neat joints and remove stained wood; and the strips are going around the widest outside curve on the boat, so for 10 feet in forward length they have to cover about 10.5 feet around the circumference.

Where your first strip ends you will start another strip, butting the end of it against the end of the first strip, and anchoring both strips to the form, which helps to align them. You can use staples, brads, hot glue, tape, bungee cords or clamps to hold these two strips in place. This second strip will overhang the bow of the boat by about 3 feet.

Now you have a few options: A) you can cut off the overhang and use it to start the next row. If you start that row at the bow, you can flip this strip and the color and grain of the wood will be a close match to the strip it was cut off of.

B) save this piece for use as a cheater strip, to fill in small areas later, and go with another 12 foot strip. If you do this, start the strip at the bow, and work toward the stern.

C)start another 12 foot strip at the stern with about 4 to 5 feet of it overhanging. this one will end at the form that is either 7 or 8 feet from the stern, keeping the joints 2 to 3 feet apart. (You would have no loss of strength if the joints were only a foot apart, but they might be more noticeable if they are so close.)

When the overhang is long enough, you can use it to start a row, or you can trim it to about 23 1/4 inches, so it fits between the centers fo two froms near the center of the boat, where the bend on it will not be too extreme, and it can follow the curvature. then add 12 foot strips to each end of this, allowing the excess to overhang, and be trimmed, from the bow and stern.

If you want to create full length strips you can scarf your 12 foot long 1/4 inch thick strips into strips that are 23' 9" long by cutting a 3 inch long taper on the end of each strip. This gives a 12:1 scarf, which is very strong and flexible. Use ordinary white glue if you wish. The thin strips are flimsy, flexible, and a pain to work with if you have a short workbench, so just do one or two at a time If you go this route. Personally, working with 1x6 stock I prefer to rip the boards in half to roughly 1x3 size, and then scarf the top ends of the two halves together, after flipping one end-for-end so the grain and color match nicely. I stack the ends of the boards so they overlap about 2 feet and then cut freehand through the stack with a handheld circular saw. Even if I make a messy cut, the two pieces match pretty closely -- and I can touch things up in seconds with a plane to give me a very neat, and fast, scarf joint.
the ratio for this is about 8:1, and while it can be glued with white glue, I might use epoxy instead. Either one should be strong enough to work with this joint. I use 3 C clamps with one over the center of the joint and the others about 10 inches to each side, to hold the wood pieces together while the glue sets up. If I started with 12 foot lumber, when the glue has hardened I have a 22 foot long 1x3, which I can rip into 6 to 8 strips that have perfect scarf joints slightly staggered along the length of them. Of course I sand the smooth the area surrounding the scarf joint on one edge before i rip those strips. I don't need to sand the other edge as it likely will be cut off when the last strip is ripped from this.

Hope this helps

PGj