Air dried white oak weighs about 47 lbs per cu/ft.  I can't find a weight for mahogany marine plywood but using African Mahogany, it is 32 lbs per cu/ft. I don't think you could bend oak planks to the degree necessary to build a Skerry or Northeast Dory but Im not really sure. That would probably involve a frame, ribs and steaming the wood. I also may be full of crap because boats were built of solid planks for centuries and still are but really don't think it would be a good wood for stitch and glue. White oak is really good at holding screws and nails and that's why traditional boats use it for the ribs. Don't think I've ever seen white oak used as planking though. 

���i mention white oak only because i thought it would be a good wood, rot resistant, strong, and flexable. what woods were/are traditionally used for planking?

      I would imagine there is no reason you couldn't use white oak to plank a boat because people have been using whatever was available for centuries building boats.  I would also imagine clear cedar would make a better material for planking because it's so much lighter and much more rot resistant.  As far as stitch and glue building goes I think the oak is just too dense to absorb the epoxy.  Just my opinion though. If I were going to use lumber To build a boat I would put up forms, plank it, then put in steam bent oak ribs before removing the forms. There are lots of YouTube videos. As an aside, white oak is twice as expensive as cedar so you could probably easily make a trade. 

Planking has been used for centuries for boat building. If you look at the supporting framing it is not thin plywood it is wood and thick enough to hold fasteners. Also many plank boats need caulking and a good soaking to get the wood planks to seal unless it is encapsilated in fiberglass.

You might want to look for other similar plans that use wood planking and not plywood.

That's mostly true for carvel planking. Clinker built, or lapstrake, planking gets by with fewer and smaller frames, needs no caulking and can stay mostly watertight even when stored out of water. This is all because of the way the planks overlap at the seams.

If you use modern glues like resorcinol to hold the seams together instead of rivets or nails, then the boat will always stay watertight. Using epoxy wil let you do less than perfect joinery because the epoxy will fill the gaps. Using plywood will let you use thinner wood for the same strength, making the boat lighter. This lets you use wires to temporarily stitch the parts together (see where we're going?).

Traditionally, the edges of the boards are beveled to be a tight fit where they overlap. However, back in 1989 CLC founder Chris Kulczycki filed a patent for a method of of cutting a rabbet on the bottom of one plank to fit over the top of the lower plank. The epoxy adhesive fills the gap between the planks in the rabbet, so no beveling is needed. This is the trademarked LAPSTITCH method. (The patent has since lapsed).

The point of the history lesson is that if you want to do stitch and glue, especially lapstitch, you need epoxy and plywood. If you want to build from oak planks, you can use carvel or lapstrake planking. Lapstrake would be lighter. But building that boat would be completely different from building a stitch and glue boat. Check out The Boat Builder's Apprentice for more info. With all that wood and a sawmill you're very well set up for traditional building.

Have fun,

Laszlo

Ninetoes,

There is a fundamental reason that stitch-and-glue is used with plywood not wood planks.  Plywood is dimensionally stable---planks are not.  Lumber shrinks and swells as its moisture content changes---plywood not nearly so much.  A stitch-and-glue boat made from solid wood planks would tear itself apart as it shrinks and swells.  I would expect a dense wood like white oak to be particularly bad in that regard.  Strip-planked boats can be built of solit wood strips, but I've not seen them built of oak.

I would recommend that you sell some of that wonderful white oak and buy a CLC kit with the money if you want to try stitch-and-glue construction.

Cheers!

Wood planks are  more stable if "riff" cut instead of quarter sawn or flat sawn. But it is more difficult and creates waste. Personally I use plywood because it is lighter and easier to work with.     

���thanks for all the responses. I figured the trouble would be dementional stability and flex. I'm still curious, so maybe I'll try it out after I get a couple tried and true boats under my belt.