With our strip-planked hull faired and the outside stem attached, there are many techniques that could turn these strips into a boat.
Strip-planking may have been the first step after the dugout in the evolution of boatbuilding techniques; the way the quality of wood is going, it might be the last to survive. At the La Routa Maya canoe race in Belize, SA., we saw a natural progression from chopping canoes out of logs to strip-plank construction with WEST SYSTEM® Epoxy.
Building the depth of a dugout canoe using pegs or edge-nailing narrow planks is universal. The Belizean builders take strip-planking to the limit by building most and sometimes all of the hull with edge-nailed strips and even using strip-planking to replace the rotten end of a large dug-out. (above)
When we add technology to this primitive way of building, wood becomes an engineering material and the possibilities get very interesting.
While Bear Mountain is known for developing a user friendly method of building small craft using a strip-planked wood core between layers of glass and epoxy, I have also written a book on building with plywood. (Kayaks You Can Build) To my knowledge, there is no test data that compares these two core materials - we need someone like yourself with structural engineering knowledge to do some testing and then share it with the rest of us. We did have impact and deflection testing done by the WEST System lab on samples of 3/4" cedar core with 1 to 6 layers of 6 oz. cloth. The test results were published in EpoxyWorks and are probably available online. If you are using their products, they do have a tech support department that is there to answer your questions.
The WEST SYSTEM User Manual & Product Guide describes the basics of fiberglass cloth application and coating for clear finishing over wood. This article is the ultimate guide to applying fiberglass over a woodstrip hull to achieve a perfect finish. Ted Moore is a master of the perfect finish, author of CanoeCraft and KayakCraft and co-owner of Bear Mountain Boats.Â
The secret to a clear coating is to control the film thickness of each layer of epoxy as it is applied. Building up the epoxy/glass over the wood may be compared to making a mirror. The prepared surface of the wood is the back reflective coating and the epoxy/glass is the glass or lens. In order to reflect the clearest image of the planking, the lens must be clean, smooth and of a consistent thickness. It is impossible to think of applying the epoxy resin in a haphazard manner and expecting to sand it back to a consistent film thickness. Also, when the epoxy builds up thick all at once, air is trapped inside and will appear as a white blemish or streak. If it is in the first coat, there is a good chance it will be in or below the surface of the cloth. Sanding will not remove these blemishes without cutting into the glass fiber, thus weakening the structure
Building the layers up evenly will involve a different technique for each layer. Each layer accomplishes a specific function and is controlled by specific limitations.
