: great site. lots of good info. a couple of questions? is it very important to
: have a closed in shop to work a strip kayak.worryed about strips taking on
: moisture. would you rip all the strips first or would you rip what you
: could apply in a say 1 hour session?generally speaking compared to
: fiberglass type kayaks is wood heavyier , more durable , cheaper
: thank you for your response

I do all my boat building outside, which limits the number of days I can work. I glue up 16- to 20-foot-long planks which I rip into strips. If I was to try and cut such long boards inside I'd need a workspace with a minimum of 42 feet for the boards to move through.

Rip all your strips in one day. The set-up time is an issue. If you jsut rip strips as you go, you'll either need to keep your saw dedicated for just ripping strips, or you'll have to take special care that the next batch of strips you rip are cut to exactly the same thickness.

Spare yourself the headaches. Rip then all at once, make a big pile of sawdust, clean up the shop, and get into putting those strips to use.

The strips take on, and lose, moisture just as other wood products will do. If they are kept dry, the wood strips will all come to have about the same moisture content. Great extremes in humidity might have some effect on the assembly of your boat, but generally there are few problems -- if any at all.
Once the strips are glued together and covered with epoxy resin (with or without glass cloth) atmospheric moisture can not enter the pores of the wood to cause changes.

Wood cored fiberglass kayaks are generally lighter because they have a wood core between the layers of fiberglass. In a solid fiberglass boat you have a core of heavier glass and plastic. The stresses are carried mosre on the outer sides of the material, so the thicker the material the stronger. But, like an "I" beam, the center can be rather flimsy and the material will still have great strength.

A thicker wood core and a thicker layer of fiberglass should be stronger than a thinner solid fiberglass boat of the same weight. But, what "should" be, and what is can be confusing. By actual tests it has been shown that a 3/16th inch thick wood core is nearly as strong as a 1/4 inch core -- but because it is thinner, and more flexible, it may be more rugged. It would tend to flex more before failing. Hitting a hard bump the thicker materials would tend to crack, while the thinner ones would bend, or deflect. You get the same effect with a thin kevlar hull.

Instead of comparing cedar strip boats to fiberglass ones, you should compare them to kevlar ones. It is not too hard to make cedar strip boats which are lighter than kevlar boats of the same size. Even if your first attempt is not that light, cedar strip boats can frequently be built to close to the weight of a kevlar boat, for far less money.

If you have the necessary woodworking tools on hand you can build a cedar strip boat for about 1/3rd the price of a similar fiberglass boat. Usually this will be cheaper than a polyethylene boat, too. If you do not have the tools, you can add in the price of buying or renting them. A tablesaw for ripping strips, for instance, can be rented for half a day to take care of this task for probably $50 or less. The rest of the work can be done with hand tools, although an electric sander would be a great timesaver, and a sabre saw will speed up cutting the forms.

This process uses a lot of disposables. You run through mixing cups, sandpaper, staples (sometimes), gloves, rollers, foam brushes etc. Budget for them, buy them, and use them once. It is poor economy to waste time thinking about how to reuse such things.

Glad to hear you are getting started. Have you read a few books on this? spend some time at the library asking for copies of kaak building books through interlibrary loan, and you'll pick up a wealth of ideas and advice. Good luck with your project.

PGJ