95% of the time someone has a problem building any of my boats it’s because they tried to cheap out on bending wood. With my kayaks and sometimes the smaller pack canoes you can make certain kiln dried woods work at the cost of some additional frustration and kindling production, but for our larger canoes, freshly sawn, clear, straight grained white oak is the ticket to success.
The reason we use white oak is because it has a closed pore structure, which resists the fungal infiltration that causes red oak to die a rapid death in marine applications. The most commonly available white oak species is Quercus Alba, which J. W. Swan & Sons in Wisconsin cuts by the literal boatload.
Our local white oak species here in Oregon is Quercus Garryana which we buy from Zena Forest Products. There’s very little Oregon white oak of this quality left so I’m very grateful to have access to it.
Overseas in England my builders have had success with Quercus Robur, a species of English Oak, and others in Europe have used ash. Supposedly black locust makes a decent bending wood but I’ve never had access to freshly sawn high-quality quality stock to do a side-by-side comparison.
Whatever the species, the important thing is getting it as green as possible with minimal run out, no knots, and straight grain.
At around 10 bucks a board foot, the price of good bending stock might seem steep, but the only thing more expensive than buying good bending stock to begin with is finally giving up after battling bad bending wood and then having to buy the good bending wood anyway. Not to mention the lost time!
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