Hi, Paul!
(Your message, brought on by discussions of red, yellow and white cedar being
used for baidarka building on the baidarka mailing list, in copy at bottom.)
"My sources" claim that only mountain ash and birch plywood are good enough.
However, I believe that this is primarily true for very delicate boats and
even there some of the less stressed members were sometimes built of light
spruce to save weight! (according to Lorenz Mayr ... I'm about half way
through scanning and annotating in English the many sketches in the book and
have a quote in hand for the initial print run for proof reading purposes, by
the way.)
I further believe that most commercial folding boats are greatly overbuilt.
The reason is that they need to avoid too many customer claims, which might
actually stem from user abuse, but which the customer of course likes to pin
on the manufacturer (and, as the manufacturer, how do you fight that without
ruining your reputation?!?).
All commercial fodling boat builders use ash / birch. I suspect that part of
the reason is again the fact of making sure that the boats stand up to ABUSE.
Most of the reason is that for marketing purposes they go with what "common
wisdom" has as the "best".
Ash is not particularly light, don't forget! I would have thought that any
straight grained wood would be very suitable (and in the case of folding
boats rot resistance is not even that much of a concern if you consider how
much time the boat actually spends wet).
If in doubt, one could always laminate frame pieces so that one is not forced
to saw them to shape, thus cut across the grain and open oneself up to splits
... should we not be posting this to FoldingBoats?!? :-) I think, I will ...
All the best,
Ralph
In a message dated Wed, 29 Nov 2000 4:23:03 PM Eastern Standard Time, "Paul
Raymond" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
<< Hi Ralph,
The question pertained to a non-folding kayak so does this still hold?
According to Mr. Blandford in "Canoes and Canoeing" on page 110 the only
wood which stands repeatedly being sprung and unsprung is ash and hickory.
In an Aleutian skin kayak, once bent it stays that way.
As you know, in mine I used ash for the long parts, okoume for the
crossframes (ribs), and rotary cut mahogany (crap) for the bottom.
What do your sources recommend for springy pieces, and for the ribs?
Paul >>
#########################################################
Foldingboats Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be
reproduced outside Foldingboats or Foldingboats archives without author's permission
Submissions: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To reply to the list, please hit the reply-all button and delete the original author.
Subscriptions: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
#########################################################
