Trees, trees, trees....

A busy week behind me, one in which I had little time to work on the boat.  But that doesn't mean it wasn't on my mind.  Every sapling I passed was evaluated for its suitability as a pole. I stole the occasional moment to debark some of the 3/4" diameter poles I've collected.  And on Friday after work, I managed to fell and limb a small tree that will make one of my two crabclaw spars.

Tonight, after a busy day of swimming with the kids, I slipped off to Home Depot for some dimensional lumber.  I purchased one 16' 2x4 to rip down for the gunwales, two 8' 2x4's to make my steering paddle, and a 4' 1x12 for the seats.  All of these pieces will require careful ripping down to smaller widths & thicknesses,  but my friend Steve has a beautiful SawStop saw in a location that will accept 16' lengths, and has graciously offered to let me use it, so we have the ability to do the precision cutting we need. 

Speaking of 16' lengths, it's a little shocking to me, after chasing straight 13' trees around in arid Colorado, that there are trees around big enough to pull 16' lumber out of.  The store had 16' lengths of pieces as big as 4x4 or 2x10.  That's a huge tree.  It's pretty humbling to think of how long it would take to grow such a long 2x4; I'll try to deserve the wood by not messing up and having to scrap any of it.

All this wood is Douglas Fir from the Pacific Northwest, which may not be sustainably sourced, but at least it's harvested under first-world labor and environmental laws.  It makes me think of the role big timber and shortages of the same have played in world history.  Easter Island became uninhabitable because they ran out of canoe trees.  England's dominance of the seas in the 18th & early 19th centuries owed a lot to the giants they harvested in their North American colonies - trees they were dependent upon because such timber was getting hard to find at home.  The American Revolution was a pretty significant blow because it reduced England's access to quality shipbuilding timber - though eastern Canada continued to provide for a while.

In my case, I got all the dimensional lumber my project will require, plus a 3/4" drill bit, for just $21.47.  Once I get this lumber cut to its final shape, I'll be able to use some of the 16' gunwale timber to loft the cuts on the plywood.  So buying and cutting this lumber is the critical next step that's been keeping other things from happening.

Found and store-bought lumber together for the first time.

Here's a pile of my lumber and found wood on the back porch, leaning up against two sheets of marine plywood and a decommissioned mountain bike.  Longer pieces aren't shown here because they didn't fit into this space, but I'm trying to keep everything under cover in what has turned out to be a very wet spring.  The found timber is stored vertically to encourage drying and keep it from warping.  In this picture, you can see 2x4's, several of the peeled poles, as well as some unpeeled ones and a few "Y" shapes that are candidates for making the spars.