: Where I live, I have a hard time finding cedar boards that are relatively
: free of knots, but knot-free pine boards are much easier to find, and much
: cheaper. I know that pine is heavier than cedar, but is that small weight
: difference enough to make a difference after the boat is finished? In
: other words, how much of the total weight of the boat comes from the wood
: itself? Also, are there any other significant differences between cedar
: and pine that I am overlooking? Thanks for your input.

I bought clear pine for the accent stripes and stars on my kayak. The pine strips do seem to be stiffer than the cedar strips. That doesn't mean that you couldn't bend them but you may need to heat/steam more strips on the hull. I did notice that I got more tear-out when going over the pine with my block plane. Maybe it just needed to be sharper, I don't know.

The color of the pine is very light in contrast. I am considering building my next boat out of pine with cedar accents just to be different. I've seen some work on this forum where someone used lighter colored wood on their kayaks and they looked really good.

--KT--