Hi Garvin,
Sounds like you have a great source of material! Doug-fir is great stuff, but does have quirks. It is almost as strong as oak in engineering applications, is therefore fairly dense, and relatively heavy. It is also quite hard, and, particularly the heartwood gets harder as it gets older. The heartwood is also relatively resistant to rot, though not quite as resistant as the cedars. I live in the interior of BC and we still have old sawdust piles from the bush mills in the 50's that are not rotting much! I find that Doug-fir is not so much brittle as splintery, small bites with tools such as planes and routers are in order. It glues well enough, being one of the primary woods used in composite beams, but watch out for pitch pockets, particularly in trees from the interior. It also has quite a density difference between the early and late wood (that accounts for most of it's not so friendly properties), so for sof construction I'd recommend going with the most rings per inch I could find. As with any wood, straight grain without runout is by far the strongest.

Never built a stripper, but my impression is that it's stronger than needed for that application. The only real penalty is additional weight. Since the main strength of strip construction is the "I" beam effect created by the 2 layers of fibreglass separated by the wood, I would be leery of going too thin on the strips to counteract the weight.

For my SOF, I used Doug-fir for various pieces, and sized them slightly smaller than the reference books to account for the higher strength/weight. I also ended up using green Doug-fir sapwood for the ribs. I cut them with the flat parallel to the growth rings, and most of them were from the very outside of the log (like making a wooden bow). They steamed and bent fine, at least as good as some of the stories I've read about oak. I tried the Doug-fir after trying a couple of other woods - epic failures when it came to bending the ribs. White oak is not available here at any reasonable price, and certainly not air dried.

So, in short, use it, consider it's properties and enjoy your build!
Mark.

: I just landed a job working for a lumber/timber company in Everett,
: WA. They produce 8 ft to 22 ft Douglas Fir planks that vary in
: width from 4 to 12 in and thicknesses of 1 to 6 inches. i also
: found out today they give employees a ridiculously good discount
: on wood as well... so my question is can Fir be used for strip
: kayaks and also do they make decent frames for skinned yaks as
: well?

: thanks all!