: Clear WRC is hard to come by around here and when it can be found
: it runs about $5.00 - $6.00 a linear foot for 1x6 board. I could
: scour the decking materials but I doubt I'd find what I need.

Clear western red cedar is expensive. Fortunately, it is not needed.

The face side of the boards you buy may appear to be filled with knots, but after you rip those boards into strips the face side becomes the edges which are glued together. The process of ripping the strips produces new "face" sides. Big knots in your boards tend to be places where the strips break moments after being cut. Think of this as natures's way of keeping you using shorter, clear pieces.

You can buy some of the cheapest, knot-filled cedar and end up with knot-free strips if you want to do a lot of scarfing--but you only need a few long strips like that.The rest of the strips you'll use can be butt-joined as you strip the boat, and strips in the range of 5- to 8-feet long are a convenient length to use. Do a little careful shopping for cedar meant for decks and you can find 12' to 16" pieces which can be ripped into lots of clean strips which are of useful length. Sure, you'll have a good deal of waste, but when you are dealing with wood which is selling for under $3 per board ft it doesn't hurt so much.

The cedar sold for siding tends to have a lot of knots and is often sold with one planed side and one rough side. Apparently people like the look of both the knots and the rough-sawn texture. Decking material needs to have smaller and tighter knots as it is meant to support the weight of people walking on those decks. For the same reason, decking tends to be 5/4 lumber rather than 4/4 lumber. The thicker boards can be used as wider strips, or they can be cut down to 3/4" width, milled withbead and cove edges, or ripped in half to give strips which are about 3/8" wide, and a lot easier to bend around any complicated curved areas. You use more strips, so there are more joints, but the angle between the strips is cut in half, so planing to make square-edged strips match is less,as is the need for bead and cove.

If cedar is hard to find, how available is redwood? it is another option.

PGJ