: I have a portable sawmill as part of my business in Hartland,CT. I have
: obtained some true northern white cedar and would love to make several
: kayaks using this wood. My question is: should I try to saw strips on the
: bandmill, which is possible, or should I saw wide boards from which to cut
: strips on a table saw later? Knowing how soft this wood is, should I
: bother to plane it to thickness or use it rough sawn and sand it? I hope
: to incorporate several types of wood for contrast in color and design. Any
: special considerations?

On my current kayak, I used fence boards, sanded one side, rough the other. Once I ripped these down, with a table saw. to 1/4 inch thick pieces, I had one smooth edge, one rough.

I put the bead on the rough side, effectivly removing all roughness, and the cove on the smooth side. Worked out pretty well for me, but I put some curved feature strips in my kayak deck, and 5ft long strips was enough for much of my striping.

I had a bit of trouble scarfing the shorter strips together, when I did want the longer strips. 1st with variations in the width of the strips,even though all my scarfs were from strips off the same board.

Second, with my cove always being on the one side of the strip, I could not align for colour as well as I could have if I had alternated. Both of these are pretty minor, and would have been avoidable if I had run each strip through the table saw to 'plain' off the rough first.

Another reason to plane the board prior to ripping the strips:. If one side is striped with slightly wider strips, you will not have symetry in the strip pattern. The especially holds true if you close the center of the hull/deck using the 'canoe' method where all strips butt down the center line.

Just like the paragraph above, the picture attached is not clear, but you can see by the strip pattern in the bottom of my canoe, that one side seems to be 'ahead' of the other side. Look way at the front where two dark strips should have ligned up side by side. (P.S. this is not the 'canoe' method of closing the center of the hull)

have a good day

Myrl
(If you can't convince them, confuse them)