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I'm well into the restoration of my '64 Seamate. I'll be replacing about 42 ribs. Almost certian to use white oak, but I'm curious that yellow pine is the equal to WO in all catagories. Any thoughts on yellow pine for ribs?

Seamate,

I have never heard of yellow pine being used for ribs. From my experience yellow pine is to soft and it does not have the strength that White Oak heartwood has.
White oak is the perfered wood to use for your ribs with white ash being the next choice if white oak is not available.

Good Luck,

Phill

Phill
I'm most likely to use white oak, but was just curious. I have a lot of ash, but it's evidently not as rot resistant. Here's a link to the chart I was refering to:

http://www.glen-l.com/wood-plywood/bb-chap5e.html#chart

John

Seamate,

Unfortunitly the Long Leaf Yellow Pine he is talking about is no longer available, unless it is salvaged from old mill lumber.
The long leaf yellow pine was over harvested many years ago and they totally deforested the south east coat area where it was native tree. It was used in the large beams and timbers that built many of the old mills throughout the east and midwest.

Good Luck,

Phill

Southern pine is a great species, but not for boat ribs. I use it all the time for structural glued laminated timber. Actually Southern Pine is close in strength to white oak. It does not have decay resistance whch is pretty important in boat construciton.

Thompson Bros. Boat Mfg. Co. sometimes used Southern Pine in their boats. My '57 Sea Lancer made at Peshtigo had a Southern Pine king plank under the deck plywood. I replaced it a few years ago - it was rotten to the core! I beleive Southern Pine is also used in my '59 Off-Shore Cabin Cruiser for the king plank.

Stick with all heartwood white oak. Should be easy to find some in Michigan.

Andreas

LancerBoy wrote:Southern pine is a great species, but not for boat ribs. I use it all the time for structural glued laminated timber. Actually Southern Pine is close in strength to white oak. It does not have decay resistance whch is pretty important in boat construciton.

Thompson Bros. Boat Mfg. Co. sometimes used Southern Pine in their boats. My '57 Sea Lancer made at Peshtigo had a Southern Pine king plank under the deck plywood. I replaced it a few years ago - it was rotten to the core! I beleive Southern Pine is also used in my '59 Off-Shore Cabin Cruiser for the king plank.

Stick with all heartwood white oak. Should be easy to find some in Michigan.

Andreas

Years ago, many "hardwood" floors in middle priced houses were in actuality Southern Yellow Pine. It is so hard compared to white pine it could easily be mistaken for a hardwood. Also it is very high in natural resin (pitch) In the 70's, it was often used in plywood for sheathing and was simply called SYP. Just as cyprus was cheap when Florida was in it's boom stage and houses were going up by the thousands, so too was SYP when the boom moved further north into the Carolinas, Georgia etc. I haven't heard it mentioned much in some years, so my question is what's the availability of it ? Also, in regards to oak in wooden boats, it's my understanding that a lot of the early sailing ships were built using "live oak" for the bottom of the rib sections. The shipwrights would find trees with a natural Y they could cut those sections from. Is this the only reason they used "live oak" or does it have better rot resistance than northern white oak ? I don't see the term live oak used in these wooden boat forums.


Brian

Southern Pine is readily available for all sorts of products. Millions of board feet are cut and milled annually. Our firm uses about 4-5 million board feet annually. And we are a very small consumer.

The heart pine sub-species of Southern Pine is non existant. Gone forever.

Live oak is still around. I cannot tell you exactly what the difference is between it and white oak (quarcas alba). During a hurricane not too many years ago, a great deal of live oak trees were knocked over. The US Navy scrammbled to get as much of it as they could - for use in restoration of the USS Constitution "Old Ironsides." They have lots of it sitting in the bottom of one of the dry docks (no water in it) at the Charlestown Naval Ship Yard. They grab what they need when something needs replacement. They also use a fair amount of glued laminated white oak in Old Ironsides, lots of it made in Peshtigo, WI.

Andreas

All the trim in my former home was southern yellow pine (1900's era)
The wood was so hard you could barely drive a finish nail into it without the nail bending. I helped restore a train caboose that was sided in yellow pine and one of the issue's was getting the paint to stick to the replacement boards due to the high amount of resin.
Karl.