: I just returned from the hardwoods candy store, anyway I felt like a kid in a
: candy store. There are so many beautiful wood species.

Isn't it fun ? Did they have any Zebrano ?

The pic shows a deck which incorporated a lot of Brazilian Purpleheart,
with the walls of the hatch recess made from Padauk - this is just before
glassing. Both woods darken and tend towards brown rather than the initial
purple and orange after a time, the padauk more than the purpleheart. The
Padauk was easy to sand, but for the use you see here, you can guess that
I didn't need it to bend. Purpleheart is very stiff and needs heat if the
strip has to twist - starting with an inch-thick plank I had to cut the
strips in half where a lot of twist was needed. Purpleheart is VERY hard to
plane cleanly as it has interlocking grain. I think the padauk would be
easier (I may find out on the next boat...). My deck used strips a little
thinner than usual, but not much, as more than half the total area was pine
and cedar... For a thin deck, you can reinforce the area where you will
sit when getting into the boat with thin ash laminations acting like ribs
under the deck. I used two or three maybe half the thickness of a normal
strip, and bevelled at the edges so there were no difficult steps to glass
over.

Follow the "two boats" link to see the finished boat (the padauk doesn't
show up at this distance). The second boat is a 5/6 scale Great Auk - the
dark wood here is from an old piano, and is definitely a hardwood. Just at
the back of the cockpit, the diagonal dark zone is Ebony - not full strips,
but a veneer applied to cover where I managed to break the deck moving from
one workshop to another before glassing.

Andy