Douglas Fir

For the last several days I've been trying to prepare for my upcoming week of vacation during which time I plan to get a jump start on the boat. I have accumulated almost everything I need for the build except the "small stuff".  Tomorrow or Monday I should be picking up my plywood from the freight company. 

I've also been trying to calculate the lumber I'll need for the spars. I had resigned myself to using box store lumber, either a combination of "select" or "premium" pine and "whitewood" or "common board", or one or the other. The first two are clear. The second two are not. I was leaning toward the second group due to the cost factor. 

Well, yesterday I received a reply to an inquiry I had made a couple weeks ago on Market Place regarding some douglas fir. To make the long story short, I drove to just above Rockwood, TN today (about 180 miles round trip) and bought 36' of 2x10 which had been part of a bowling alley. Cost: $54. It's old wood which is pretty tight grained. The catch is that it has knots in it.

Of course, douglas fir or sitka spruce are the preferred wood for spars, neither of which are readily available around these parts and certainly not at that price. But in buying it, I have just created a lot of extra work for myself. I'll want to splice out the knots so that means a lot of scarffing! I'll have to devise a system for making good scarffs in my staves and laminates. 

I believe I can do it. My key concern will be slippage during glue-up. I've come up with the idea of using small wooden dowels to lock the two pieces together. I'm excited to try it. 

The longest pieces available were only 16' so I was going to have to do some scarffing anyway. This will just mean more. I bought a 2x10x14" footer which looked a bit better than any of the 16's he had. I guess we'll see how it all turns out.