Cedar gunwales?

[Mihun09]

A lot of the older boats we restore have spruce inners. The Tremblays are actually mahogany. We have been replacing with douglas fir, and sometimes splicing in repairs with old spruce 2x4 pieces that match the grain better. We used red oak on one ...very pretty. Our friend Doug has been using birch lately. We tried some and it was for sure hard but kind of heavy. We did a laminate on that. I do have some shorter pieces of spruce that can be scarfed.

Laminations work good for seats and stems and such so why not gunwales?

What she said. We try to match the original wood as much as possible but None of the old w/c canoes have ash gunwales, even into the late 60's. Primarily spruce and even D. Fir on the one CCC boat that we sold. We did birch stems for the Langford but it is very heavy. I would use cherry if I could get the lengths but the only thing other than Ash we can get in 16 footers is D. Fir. When we get to the Morris again I will scarf some spruce since we in the middle of the prairies cannot get 18 foot lengths even custom ordered.

Karin

 

[wingnut]

I've been looking into laminating a seat frame and looked up weights and strengths for some wood that I can source locally. Poplar and D fir look like a good middle of the road option. Here's a list that you might find interesting.
Ash - 42 Lbs per Cu Ft with a bending strength of 15,000 Lbs
cherry - 35, 12,300
D fir - 32, 12,400
Poplar - 28, 10,100
Basswood - 26, 8,700
WRC - 23, 7,500

 

[Mihun09]

Usually when I laminate a seat frame I use cherry and ash for the contrast, but I have used cedar as well at times. Laminates are usually stronger anyway. I would think a laminated gunwale would need to be glued up on the boat, since if you do it prior it may not bend like you need it to.

 

[frozentripper]

Wingnut, you might find that weight and strength varies from board to board within species in the lumber yard... a fast-growing tree growing in optimum light and moisture might yield boards with widely-spaced growth rings and lighter and weaker wood. Slower-growing might be the opposite, closely-spaced rings, heavier and stronger.

IIRC, one of the woods with the best strength to weight characteristics with good resilience to stresses (will bend quite a bit without breaking) is sitka spruce, but it isn't easily available here. White ash and yellow birch are, and will make good seat frames, esp for a flexible frame which will bend a little when bearing weight. I once overbuilt a canoe seat to the point where it wouldn't flex at all when sitting down... sitting on it felt like sitting on the edge of a concrete block. A minor point to be sure, still it's the little things that add comfort for a kinder, gentler canoe (where have I heard that before, it had something to do with bush).

 

[wingnut]

I'll start a thread on laminating seat frames. I meant to put the list of woods up so the OP could get some perspective on some different wood choices.