You need to let it dry properly before maching any strips from it. The wood may move around (shrink, bend, twist, etc.) during the drying process and this would ruin your strips because the would all end up distorted. Also working wet wood is very hard on saw blades, router bits, etc. Look on the internet for wood drying techniques to find out how to "sticker the wood" while it is drying. Either that or you are going to have some twisted wood when it drys. I imagine this is one reason why the wood is so inexpensive.

Greg

.: This Doug Fir is pretty wet (literally just milled), would that
: make it worse or better to work with? my thinking is the more
: dry it is, the more brittle it is... plus we also have Hemlock
: Fir and Spruce so i do have a couple more options. i just hate
: seeing all this free/inexpensive wood and not building a kayak
: out of it ;)