: Folks,

: I have just come into a good quantity of nice sassafras wood. Is this wood
: suitable for stripping? I dont have a sense of the weight or flexibility
: of this wood. Any insight would be helpful. My hull is stripped with WRC
: and have been looking for an accent wood for the deck.

: Scot in Detroit

Hi Scot-

According to the tables in Steward's Boatbuilding Manual, Sassafras is the same weight as Sitka spruce, but it is much harder and much more rot resistant. In my experience it's quite flexible, but doesn't have the same structural resilience of spruce. It should make compound bends easier than WRC. It glues well. It's kind of grainy, so it will soak up a lot of epoxy, but no more than if you were using ash. I'd definitely put a seal coat of epoxy on it before I tried laying up any fiberglass. Although it is flexible, it doesn't BEND well, so it probably wouldn't work for a coaming lip, but then again softwoods don't bend well either and people use those all of the time.

It smells AMAZING when you're working it, and people will come from blocks away to see what the smell is. I've used it as a secondary wood in drawer boxes for a long time because of this, and because it is so cheap here in NW Ohio. It's 1/2 the cost of clear white pine, and doesn't have the acrid smell of pine when it sits in a cabinet case.

I have also used it in building SOF kayaks for stems, stringers, and deck beams, and it holds up extremely well and is really nice to work with. The color is a neutral brown, but when you clearcoat it after planing it has a "shimmery" look I think because it reflects light from the grain as well as the surface. If you sand it down to 400 and blow it off with compressed air or vacuum it really well to pull out all of the sanding dust I'm sure you'll get the same effect. It does turn dark (like most woods) a bit quicker than other woods, so if you're fussy about color leave a piece in the sun for a week or so to give yourself an idea how dark it will get. I've never used it on anything exposed to UV when clearcoated, so I'm not sure how that will effect the darkening.

I really like this wood- it's a great resource in this area. Be sure to post photos when you're done!

m