: Probably not very close to where you live, but Houston Hardwoods had cypress
: about 2.5 years ago when I lived there.

: Kurt
Thanks for your response, Kurt and Gerald. I sent email to a sawmill in Bastrop,Texas this morning. Interested to see what they say. They sell cypress, pecan, pine, mesquite, sycamore. I found them by Google searching "Texas cypress lumber". I'd love to have a pecan kayak, to tell the truth. But I wonder if pecan is too stiff and hard to bend. I know it's hard. I read it's twice as hard as oak. Don't know much about sycamore except I love the tree the same way I love pecan and cypress and mesquite.

I decided to build Great Auk because it has less severe curves than some models and might accomodate a more difficult material. It also has an easy deck where I can use small amounts of the hardest of decorative woods. I have an innovation to try on this boat, using clear fishing line to tie strips together and to pull strips to the mold forms where necessary. Have others tried this? I have some saddle-makers needles that I plan to use to sew the thing together till glue dries. I'll pull out the stitches where I can and cut them close with a scalpel where they're glued in.

Looking forward to this project. It's been almost forty years since I built a kayak. Early sixties I built fifteen kayaks. Most were skin (plastic tablecloth fabric) over a light frame of wood. Also built Styrofoam core boats with fiberglass and resin. The glass was heavy and coarse back then. The polyester resin I got from Dow Chemical Co. It was still experimental back then and was horrible to work with, and more dangerous than I knew then. So I'm looking forward to the modern materials as well as these better designs. Didn't mean to ramble, but I can't say what I want to with fewer words. My Regards, Glen