What woods do you use most frequently in NZ?
Most of our prime native timbers are getting harder and harder to obtain these days. That is good for conservation, but bad for kayak builders. Generally our boat building native woods are honey coloured and relatively heavy hard woods ie: Kauri - no longer readily available (but serious snooping can still bring up some recycled kauri) and kahikatea. We can get western red cedar (imported). But generally I don't think we have the choices you guys seem to have.

Mind you with a bit of rat cunning, judicious use of our 'heavy-ish' natives as contrast strips with western red cedar and I'm sure something could be worked out. I will have to build up confidence and make a cunning plan before I can consider taking on a strip built project myself. In the meantime we seem to have heaps of well priced Luan and meranti marine grade ply to work out fibreglasssing techniques etc with stitch and glue.

A few strippers have been built in NZ. I was forwarded this site:

http://www.woodenboat.net.nz/Pages/TheBuilders/Dianne/Diannes.html

Cheers Pete