Ex-ceder-ingly expensive strip planking

[richplym]

On the off chance that someone on the forum can help, I recently got reading about wooden boats. More precisely I am pretty keen on the idea of building a strip-planked 15-16ft Sportboat. The ideal craft would look like this (obviously with a seagull...):

http://www.robbwhite.com/sportboat.html

But given that plans for that cost $75 PLUS POSTAGE, I am keen on this as the next best thing:

http://www.svensons.com/boat/?p=Utility/DollyVarden

Now If you read the blurb on the photocopied magazine from the 50s in that second link you will see it mention "low cost" as one of the benefits. So I thought to myself about how my surfboard making skills would make this a doddle to build as a strip plank hull with epoxy and fibreglass inside and out, ready to pop on the roofrack and cart down to Lerryn for a famous victory. I could make the mould frames out of various bits of mdf from the shed and make a really cool boat for not too much money. Today I phoned around to get an idea of cost of strip planking. I know ceder isn't cheap so asked for douglas fir instead and how much did i get quoted? £1.31 per meter for 60 strips of 16ft = £382.20

That strikes me as really rather expensive SO.... Does anyone know of a timber merchant/tradesman/boat builder/gypsy who sells more reasonably priced strip planks? The plank in question is ceder or douglas fir in 3/4" x 1/4" bead and cove minimum length 16ft (preferably 17-18ft), but would settle for 1" x 1/4" without the bead and cove as a minimum.

Here's some fairly graphic awesome strip planking (We're past the watershed right?)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIGtaCd-evA

Any takers?

Rich

[phil]

Do you or a friend not have a table saw and router? Make the strips yourself. You can use most any suitable softwood that you can get your hands on as you are encasing it in epoxy anyway. Use whatever decent dry local wood you can get. Pine and spruce are often used over here, don't know exactly what would be available over there in your locale. It takes slightly longer but you can easily scarf pieces together, its one of the major benefits of strip building.

[Charles uk]

Cedar might look very pretty but at £380 closed cell foam must be around the same cost, & by the time you've added in the epoxy & sheathing fabric your going to double that!

Look at stitch & glue designs, not as pretty, but the finished hull will cost less than your timber costs & will be a whole lot quicker.

I bet H A would cost out a similar 16 ft design at less than £200 & 3 days in polyester & ply.

[The Tinker]

I cut all my frames from some damage weather boards made of western cedar. They were easy to get from timber merchant cheap. Some one had scraped them with a fork lift truck. I cut off broken bits and that left me with plenty of good wood.

[richplym]

I'm not really very keen on stitch and glue plywood as I find the shapes tend towards boxy and angular. I already have a 12ft fibreglass dinghy and my reasons for wanting to go with strip plank are so I can have a refined curved design light enough to put on a car that also looks amazing. I can source epoxy and glass fairly cheap from surf/boat suppliers down here in Plymouth but I'm having trouble finding strips. I did wonder about getting some larger reclaimed planks and getting them cut to size, has anyone done this? As an example there's a guy on ebay selling 50ft x 10ft sections of a ceder barn for £350 each which is already 1/5th the price quoted for my strips.
Rich

[phil]

Strip building is supposed to produce an inexpensive hull if you do not count the time putting it together. Over this side I have never ever heard of anyone ever expecting to buy pre cut strips, breathing the sawdust as you rip the strips is part of the experience. The possible exception to the rule of never buying ready to use strips would be a shop building many small boats and having a large surplus of strips left over cheap.

I understand the technique originated when fishermen in Maine living near factories producing pine boxes saw a source of free waste strips they could utilize to build boats. Don't you folks have proper lumberyards over there where you can buy planks of construction lumber you could saw up into strips. What no rural mills, no people who make a living or a hobby of running a bandsaw mill? Use your scrounging skills or develop some, boating is much less expensive that way, also a great deal more fun and entertaining.

[Charles uk]

The reason the use cedar strip is that it's a very light non resinous decorative timber that works well with epoxy, cedar in this instance is only used as a lightweight core to separate the 2 layers of epoxy mat that are doing all the work in the structure your going to build.
If you plan on saving money by finding a cheaper pine core you will pay a weight penalty if you can find a non resinous knot free variety.
I sold a 15 ft cedar strip canoe for £700 over 10 years ago, 700 might have covered the materials but not the 100+ hours labour & swearing.

Your proposing to build a hull that is not blessed with too many compound curves, that could be built in 2 layers of 2 or 3 mm ply in a quarter of the time & for a quarter of the investment!