Right! Thanks for clarifying that

It's ideal if the bending wood is green but the long wood can be dry. Pine, spruce or fir works just fine if you can't find western red, I just like it because it's light. I wouldn't use poplar.

Hey Scott, my friends in Tasmania use Tasmanian Blackwood for the ribs, and they purchase Western Red Cedar which is imported. They order the fabric and the coating from the states. they have built dozens of my F1’s down there. Feel free to send me an email.

All wood can bend if you know what you are doing

I'm sure it would, just hard to source.

@@capefalconkayak if I go that route, I'll let you know and I'll take pictures. I have several clear logs that I believe are long enough for the coaming as well. Osage is a gorgeous wood!

Osage Orange is too prone to splitting over time. Plenty of it here in MO, tho'.

It depends on the piece, you could probably do something like that for anything on deck but the ribs would need to be a bendable hardwood.

Any softwood that you can find in longer clear lengths is fine. Spruce, pine, and fir all work for the long wood. For ribs you'll need to see what is available, talk to boatbuilders and tell them what you are doing. I've had people in Europe use ash but I'm sure there are other options. I also occasionally ship ribs to in my kits to European builders.

@@capefalconkayak thank you! I think I could use common oak (quercus robur) for ribs which is recommended for boat building just I have to find some source for green wood. I have also ash directly on our ground and some trees should be taken out soon as they are too dense growing but they are not wider than 8-10 inches. I would have to figure out how to make cuts to get appropriate material.

Ceder is grown in Europe. I'm looking at an ash and ceder construction. Edit: also because of ash dieback there is lots of green ash available right now. Steaming it would likely kill any residual fungus, but I need to find more information on that.

in england they use oak for steam bent ribs. In France boatbuilders use Robinia pseudoacacia commonly called robinier faux-acacia. green of course.

I understand the dream of the do-everything boat, but speaking from real (and often terrifying) experience, all small boats sail poorly in those conditions. The sea state makes the hull shape almost irrellevant, and the boundary layer between the waves and the wind is so disturbed that it spoils the sail. Small boats really do best in winds from 7-15 knots, although you can go a bit higher in very protected waters. In these circumstances, an open boat does just fine and is reasonable safe if handled properly. When you get into rough waters though, now it's time for watertight bulkheads and decks, neither of which are well suited to skin on frame. Upwind sailing is poorly suited to skin on frame in general because by the time you've put all the work in to make it work well, you've invested an equal amount of time and money as just building a plywood boat, which is better suited to the task and barely heavier. Your specs really just indicate a standard 17' canoe, maybe with a deck cover, and a lot of flotation. The sailing part is hard though, it's doable, but canoe sailing is always twitchy and expensive and makes your canoe useless otherwise, at least if it's set up for upwind sailing. If you are serious about doing it, you'd need to devise a way to quickly recover from and dewater after a capsize, which will happen. Too many compromises, and probably not the right medium to build it in.

Yeah I guess the pore structure would lend itself to that wouldn’t it?

When I taught classes on the East Coast, I was mostly using eastern white pine. You could use freshly sawn ash for the ribs or order bending oak. A decent amount of bending of makes it up that way because of all the Boatbuilding schools.

@@capefalconkayak I can definitely get green ash, clear up to about 8 feet. I can also get clear spruce and white pine up to about 16 feet but it will take months because the sawyer has to go through hundreds of logs before he will find clear lengths like that. What’s your take on green ash for every bent part? Any thoughts on scarf joints on the 16 foot lengths?

Really as big as you want to make it I feel like my system works a little bit better with smaller canoes but there’s no technical issues with scaling things up.