: Hi there,
: Does anyone know where I can get cedar strip planks in the UK?
If you mean "planks from which to make cedar strips" there should be
someone near you. If you mean "ready-made cedar strips", your choice is
going to be a lot more limited. What is actually practical for you, on a
limited budget, depends on what tools you already have or can beg or borrow.
We've recently had a ceiling done with new tongue-and-groove cedar boards,
which are just shy of 3/4" thick. The stuff left over makes perfect boat
building strips. I am a bit spoilt, as we had a couple of ceilings removed
which had been done the same way - but badly (the planks were nailed up
before they had dried out, and shrunk/warped a lot after fitting). These
boards are 5/8" thick, and they make perfectly good strips, too - although
they might look a bit narrow if I cove-and-beaded them. But a block plane
is cheaper than a routing table, so I just bevel the edges and find it works
just fine. I cut my strips using a small band saw which was not hugely
expensive. A band saw leaves a thinner kerf, but the strips need a bit
more planing and sanding, than if you use a table saw, but the band saw
is good for cutting out forms and various other things, too.
The supplier for our new cedar was North Yorkshire Timber in Northallerton.
I believe they mill this themselves, so boards without the tongue and groove
would probably be cheaper and you get more strips out of them. I'm sure there
are many such timber merchants around the country. You could probably even
get them to cut strips for you, but putting the bead and cove on would be a
bit more specialist and put the price up a lot (maybe three times as much
labour involved...).
BTW pine is fine - it produces a much paler boat initially, but the pine
yellows over time and ends up looking not unlike cedar. The photo below shows
a strip deck where the lighter wood is "redwood pine" (Scandinavian-grown
Scots pine), the brown is cedar (from the old ceilings) and the dark is
purpleheart (not recommended unless you enjoy sharpening your plane and
working very hard at the sanding...). The boat is a couple of years old
in this first photo. The lower pic shows it new, and you can see that the
pine started off a lot lighter.
Spruce also works, but it's hard to find any which isn't knotty. The
cockpit coaming was milled out of cheap DIY studding spruce and is a
close colour-match to the pine - it even colours at pretty much the
same rate.
Andy
