: By the way can anyone in the UK recomend good suppliers of timber and
: glass/resin products?

Whereabouts in the UK are you ? Robbins Timber in Bristol is one of the
best sources for pre-milled WRC, and they also do the West system epoxy in
big quantities (much cheaper if you are building more than one boat).

But if you are willing to cut it yourself, you will find cedar boards at
a local timber merchant - we had a load (for a ceiling) from North Yorkshire
timber and I got all the offcuts for boat building. You can also build in
clear pine or spruce which are at least as readily available in the UK, and
probably cheaper - if you have any architectural salvage places near you
they may well be worth a look - although old pine floorboards are now
getting to be more expensive than new timber :-( I had enough 5/8" cedar
tongue-and-groove board for a dozen boats...

West system epoxy is available from lots of yacht chandlers such as Trident
in Gateshead. Fyne boat kits in Windermere do a different brand of epoxy
(can't remember which) and also do marine ply in boat-building thicknesses,
but it comes from Robbins in Bristol originally... Whereever you are, you
are likely to find similar outlets.

You'll see on the list that a lot of US builders get their cedar from places
like Home Depot - just normal DIY places. You won't get cedar that way in the
UK, but if you are in a DIY place its always worth having a browse through
the timber and buying up any nice clear planks - maybe two or three percent
of B&Q's stock on any day is worth getting - they don't mind you sorting
through and only buying clear stuff... You'll be getting plantation-grown
spruce mostly, which looks very pale when built, but colours quite quickly
to a more yellow shade.

My local (well, Boroughbridge - nearly an hour away) timber merchants doing
hardwood for the furniture and wood-turning trade/hobbyist quite often have
what they call Redwood Pine - actually Scots Pine grown in Scandinavian
plantations - and this is quite economical and often quite free of knots,
although a little heavier than spruce or cedar. I usually buy the best planks
when I am there buying American white ash for stems and the like... It's
always fun to wander round upmarket timber merchants like this, drooling over
tools and looking at unlikely timbers that might make for bold designs -
I bought Purpleheart and Padauk here, used on the deck of my hybrid
Cormorant, and such places are also good for buying veneers for inlays.
I bought a lot of Southern Yellow Pine - quite a heavy softwood, but with
an excellent grain - which I've not got round to using on a boat yet...

The pic shows a deck using salvaged WRC, Redwood Pine and Purpleheart.
There's Padauk in the hatch recess right at the stern, but it doesn't
show on this pic. The pine is just as easy to work as the WRC - purpleheart
definitely isn't :-(

Andy