thompsondockside.com

As I mine the posts in this forum I see a consensus of opinion calling for heartwood white oak often accompanied by recommendations to use quartersawn material. On other forums I see equally strong calls for riffsawn and plainsawn material and an strong emphasis on making sure there's little or no run out. My bank balance suggests plainsawn will do just fine but I'm open to a compelling argument.

As I see it, wherever possible, every attempt should be made to duplicate the original material. Do that and you can't go wrong. One of the 1st little homilies I ever learned from my Grandfather and Father was "if it's worth doing, it's worth doing right " Still applies more than 50 years later.

Brian

I made my first attempt this weekend at steaming new ribs. I was using white oak with a mix of different grains. After 20 minutes in the steamer, you could bend them in any direction without any problem. The key seemed to be to have the steam chamber over 200 degrees before putting the rib in and then maintaining the temp. The rib was easily pliable for about 5 minutes. I have about 10 more ribs to go and keel and stem and ......

Brad

That's encouraging. I bought the materials I need to build a steam box - turkey cooker, etc and what little snow we got is almost gone. I hope it will warm up enough to get started soon. It's not terribly cold now, mid 40s, but the wind is howling and the nighttime temperatures are still below freezing. Maybe mid March.

I'm told the hardwood supplier in Bend will machine the wood to spec. Probably cheaper than buying a planer. If not, I guess I'll have to do that. I've got everything else.

Just steamed and installed 4 more ribs on my Off Shore last night so the port side is done.
The ribs I used last night were milled from a different board than the first 4 were and these ribs were extremely pliable. I bent one that was 4 ribs from the transom which is more or less a 90 degree bend with no problem.
Everyone has there own procedure ,but these things seem to be a common rule of thumb:
Be sure to soak the ribs first.
You want to have a good rolling boil to produce steam. Temp in the steam chamber will be around 212 degrees (The temp of boiling water).
Should not be a problem with a turkey fryer.
Chamber needs to be up to temp before putting in the ribs. Make sure that the steam flows thru the chamber and out the end.
1 hour of steam time per inch of thickness.
I used 1/4 sawn white oak because that seemed to have the least grain issues.
Also , you will need to drill pilot hole for any screws that you put in once the rib has dried or ribs may split or screw may snap.
My take on it is this:
This is not an exact science and everyone's procedure and results are going to be different.
Experiment and see what works best for you.
Karl