Date: Tue, 04 Aug 1998 11:22:26 -0500
From: "Wolfgang Brinck" <wolfgang.brinck@hksystems.com>
To: baidarka@lists.intelenet.net
Subject: Re: [baidarka] Cutting down a tree for materials
> 1) Can I work these woods before they have been dried?
Tamarack of Teaching Drum Outdoor School has done an interesting
experiment - very scientific actually. He harvested a number of species
of small saplings, 8 to 10 feet in length, stripped the bark off them
and nailed them to the side of his house at the heavy end of the sapling
with the thin end down. He put a push pin in the end of the skinny end
so it stuck out at a 90 degree angle to the house. As the saplings
dried, they twisted; some close to 90 degrees, The push pin tracking the
degree of twist. On rainy days they untwisted some.
Tamarack launched on this experiment after he put together a Yukon style
frame boat with green saplings and found that the whole frame twisted
after the boat dried. So I believe that the moral of the story is to
let your wood dry before you build the boat.
And turning the saplings around doesn't help either. The twist is in the
same direction no matter what.
Wolfgang
DrDuktayp wrote:
>
> Hello:
>
> After doing lots of reading (Putz, Zimmerly, Dyson...) I have fallen in love
> with the skin frame kayak. I am wondering if anyone has felled a tree and
> used it for the stringers and gunwales. I have both Yellow Cedar and
> Hemlock in my backyard...it's basically a forest back there. They range in
> size from small like 4 inch diameter up to 14 or so inches. Since it is so
> thick back there I would like to cut down a few of the smaller trees any
> way. So, my questions are...
>
> 1) Can I work these woods before they have been dried?
> 2) Does this even sound plausible?
> 3) Which wood would be best?
>
> Thanks,
> DrDuktayp
>
> "There is nothing-absolutely nothing-half so much worth doing
> as simply messing about in boats." Kenneth Grahame