: hi guys, just wondering if anybody out there knows of a white cedar suplier
: in ireland, finding it very tough to find a suplier!

: also is red cedar a viable subsitute in relation to the strip method?

Brian,

White cedar was the preferred wood for making strip canoes about 50 to 125 years ago. Around 60 years ago the boating industry moved to using plastics, and glass-reinforced plastics. The technoligy was used during WWII and after the war there were materials available for amateurs to play with. The plastic resin used for the fiberglassing was a polyester-based material. It is the basic plastic used in most of the things we think of as "fiberglass".

Old wood boats, and old canoes could be sheathed with glass cloth and polyester resin, and be given a new lease on life. At the time most canoes were sheathed with cotton duck (canvas) and oil paint. Replacing one fabric for another-- and one paintable coating for another -- was a simple process.

And it worked great for quite a while.

Then things changed. People playing with different materials discovered that they had problems with the polyester resin adhering to red cedar if they did a simple substitution. The red cedar was oilier, and delamination would occur in some spots a few years after construction. So people used shellac to seal the wood before 'glassing, and worked with red cedar. However, bigger boats, those that stay in the water all their life, were having other problems with their fiberglass sheathing. They were rotting under the fiberglass skin. While water didn't penetrate the fiberglass, a tiny amount of water vapour could get through.

The solution to both situations was a more-expensive resin, which both binds well to red cedar and is impervious to water vapour: Epoxy !

White cedar, particularly the Atlantic White cedar, is a smaller tree than a Western Red cedar. If you are a primitive aboriginal who has to cut down a tree with a stone axe it would be a good choice. The wood is fairly soft and easy to cut, it splits nicely along the grain lines, and it was (back in the good-old-days) fairly common. In modern times the homebuilding industry has embraced red cedar as a fine material for siding and decks. So, wherever shipping is reasonable, there will be lumberyards selling red cedar in standard sizes.

It is the convenience and availability of red cedar (at least in the northern half of the US) which has made it the most common material for making strip canoes and kayaks. Other inexpensive options in some parts of the US are pine and cypress. Australia and New Zealand have species which I cna't pronounce or spell--but they seem to work fine for the kayak builders down under. If I think of Scandinavian woods, I think of Birch. But, if you have a local variety of almost ANY wood, you should be able to build a boat with it.

Quite a few of the "cedar strip" boats you see will have accent colors supplied by strips from other woods. Combinations work fine.

What local softwood species can you obtain at a reasonable price? Send back a couple of wood types and I expect you'll get a response form someone who has used that species for one of their boats, and cna advise on any particular quirks thay may have encountered.

Hope this helps

]PGJ