: Thanks. I'm going to proceed with the wood I have - I think the lumberyard
: won't take it back and who can blame them? What thickness do you use for
: the gunwales?

Wes,

Go to Harvey Golden's link and scroll down to his materials list. You will find he often uses fir fer gunwales and deck beams. Harvey recently built me an 1892 replica and it's made with doug fir gunwales and deck beams. You can make fir gunwales as thin as 1/2" (gunwales this thin are commonly found in Greenland), it will be plenty strong, but you will need to be careful when drilling the rib mortises.

Perhaps I have been lucky with wood selection but I haven't have any trouble working CVG doug fir, in fact it's among my favorite woods. As long as the wood grain is straight I find a razor-sharp plane/spokeshave blade and a narrow mouth to plane fir with no problems or surprises. For paddles, though, I greatly prefer western red cedar for the light weight.

Greg Stamer