Why use wood for a boat?

With all the modern materials available to make boat, why would you want to choose wood? There are several reasons. The first is that working with wood is well within the means of most people. It doesn't take a lot of time, the material is relatively easy to obtain and it is not too expensive. But even if you are not interested in building your own boat, wood still has some significant advantages. Done right, wood is an almost miraculous. It is very strong, lightweight and does not fatigue.

Most people are used to the ability of taking a stick of wood, bending it over their knee and breaking it in to pieces quite easily. How can it be so easy to break, yet still strong? You need to consider how little that stick weighs, if you were to get a piece of plastic, fiberglass, Kevlar, carbon fiber or even steel, of the same weight, what would you be able to do with it if you bent it over your knee. Most would bend very easily, some would break with very little effort.

If you just compare strength vs weight, wood is stronger than steel, most fiberglass and aluminum. If you compare stiffness vs weight, wood is stiffer pound-for-pound than Kevlar, all fiberglass, and steel. By these measures wood still doesn't measure up to carbon fiber and other exotic materials like titanium, but if you look at structural efficiency which relates stiffness to density it turns out that pound-for-pound wood is the most efficient material for producing a given structure.

The down side of wood is it is soft, and it rots. However, there is a simple solution to both these problems. A simple layer of fiberglass and epoxy sheathing the wood will provide protection from abrasion as well as moisture. This composite construction is one of the best ways to build a boat that is light weight, strong and durable. And it is something most people can do in their basement or garage with a minimum of tools. All it takes is a little time.

Aren't you afraid to put that beautiful boat in the water?

While they look easy to damage, these boats are tough and can handle abuse.

No, there is nothing the water can do to damage the boat. It is after all a boat and designed to get wet. "But," you may ask, "what happens if you hit something?" I use my boats hard. I land on rocks, slide up on beaches and hit things. While it may appear that that the wood is right there where it will be easily damaged, it is an illusion. Actually the wood is under a layer of fiberglass cloth set in epoxy.

This may be hard to understand when what you see is wood, but you are actually looking through a layer of glass fabric. This is not just a little bit of epoxy or polyester resin, but actual glass. Like what you have in your windows. It is in a fiber form that is woven into cloth. This cloth starts out with a white appearance, but when the epoxy resin is spread over this cloth it becomes completely clear. This provides a huge amount of protection for the wood.

It is possible to scratch the outer surface. Just like any boat, if you hit something you can expect to get a scratch. But, it is actually quite hard to have this scratch be so deep that it actually hits the wood. It is very hard to hit something so hard that you actually get structural damage. Surface scratches are easily fixed with a new coat of varnish. It is not that the scratch needs fixing, other than for cosmetic reasons, but eventually you will want to apply another coat of varnish and most of your scratches will disappear at this time.

How much does a wood kayak weight?

Most wooden boats will actually weigh less than commercially manufactured boats. Because wood is structurally efficient, a boat built with it can be made quite light. The only real downside of wood is that since it is a natural material it is not necessarily consistent in its weight. And obviously different wood species will have different densities and result in finished products with different weights.

For standard strip built construction with 1/4" thick western red cedar strips with 6 ounce fiberglass inside and out, a good estimate will be 0.7 pound per square foot of surface area. In other words a boat like the Guillemot with a surface area of 47 square feet, this will give a bare hull weight of about 32 pounds. When you add seats, bulkheads, hatches and other out fitting the boat should weight about 35 to 40 pounds.

Stitch and glue construction will follow about the same formula. While plywood tends to be denser, the typical material is thinner so the same 0.7 lbs/ft². estimate works well.

Your results may vary, but this should give you a target weight to shoot for. The most common reason for exceeding this target weight is being heavy handed as you apply the epoxy.

Why "Stitch-and-Glue"?

Because stitch-and-glue boat construction uses a relatively small number of wood pieces a boat can be build in relatively short order. Because plywood is inherently quite strong for its weight the resulting boat is quite tough and lightweight with a minimum of additional reinforcement.

While the technique quickly produces a boat, that does not imply that it is necessarily easier than strip-building. The shape of a stitch-and-glue boat is largely determined by the shapes of the plywood panels. If the panels are not accurately cut, the resulting boat may be quite badly distorted.

This makes stitch and glue designs very well suited for kits. With a CNC cut kit, the accuracy of the panel shapes is assured. Building from plans introduces the possibility for more errors. While this should not scare you away from building from plans, you need to understand the need for care and accuracy as you layout the panels.

Why "Strip-Built"?

One of the biggest benefits to building a small boat with narrow strips is how accessible it is. While it looks intimidating, taking a bundle of small strips and wrapping them around a set of forms really is a matter of patience and not one of specialized skills. The tool requirement is minimal and the technique is very tolerant of mistakes. If you fail to make perfect joints between strips, the epoxy and fiberglass will fill them in and seal the mistakes.

If you are looking for a way to mass-produce wooden boats, strip-building is probably not the best choice. It is a time consuming method. More traditional methods of boat building tend to be quicker when performed by experience craftsmen, but that speed and ability to build a usable boat is largely dependent on the skill of the builder. The strength and water-tight integrity of the finished traditionally-built vessel is a result of the ability of the builder to make tight and sound joints. This takes skill and practice.

With strip-building, there is really only one woodworking skill that you are required to master; this is the ability to taper the end of one strip to fit between two existing strips. You must perform this step many times, but it is not hard and if you don't do it perfectly, it will be fixed later.

Strip-building allows you to reproduce virtually any boat shape imaginable, with a minimum of skill.