: I'm buying cedar boards for a Fire Star baidarka, and I'm wondering
: how I calculate how much wood to get. I may need to drive a
: couple hours to pick it up, so I'd greatly prefer to make one
: trip.

My rule of thumb is 2 board feet for each foot of boat length. So a 17' boat would need 34 board feet. I always add a bit to that, but it gets you in the ball park. This only works for kayaks and probably only relatively narrow ones like sea kayaks, but again, its a ball-park number