Slat Cedar

Slat Cedar
I want to build a slat wood canoe?

I want to use pine instead of cedar with 6ml marine ply ribs then coat it with epoxy inside and out with no fibreglass. The pine will be a little bit heavier, but it should add extra strength. Can anybody see any difficulties with this?

If by “slat wood” you mean the traditional wide, thin planks and narrow, thick ribs — then you will have to devise some way of joining the planks to keep water from getting between them. This was traditionally done with canvas (filled with a waterproof plaster, and painted). Newer cedar plank canoes have been covered with fiberglass and epoxied. Planking on traditional canoes was (is) about 1/8 or 3/16 inch.

Using pine instead of cedar will not make the boat appreciably stronger, but it wlll be heavier once the pine begins absorbing water. And it will die a younger death once the pine begins to rot.

If by “slat wood” you mean the “strip built” method in which the planks are made thicker and narrower and can be edge-glued then perhaps pine will suffice. You will have to ensure that the epoxy surface (inside and out) is thick enought to be absolutely impervious to water. There would be no way to ensure this condition if you constructed the boat with ribs (unless you layed them in later, after epoxying the interior. The strips in a strip-built canoe are usually 1/4 thick and about 3/4 inch wide.

If you are about to construct a plank on rib canoe, your largest investment with be in the materials and time spent building the proper building form. Use cedar for the ribs and planks, anything else is courting disaster. Cover the outside of the canoe with filled canvas — or dacron sealed with aircraft dope — or with FG and epoxy.