By the time you add enough glass and epoxy to make up for bad wood, it's cheaper to just buy the good stuff, especially if you count your labor.

It's over $70 for a quart of resin and a pint of hardener, plus the fiberglass plus the fillers and thickeners plus the sandpaper, gloves, denatured alcohol, stirring sticks, cups, etc. Depending on the quality of the wood, you could need glass on both sides, possibly even multiple layers. By the time you add it all up the cheap wood may not save you anything over the good stuff.

Good wood is also easier to work with. It cuts and bends better. The surfaces are usually finished better and the edges are square.

Now if you just want to practice with epoxy (glassing, fillets, etc.), the cheap wood will work fine for that. Some of the epoxy manufacturers, such as System 3, even sell a relatively inexpensive trial kit with small quantities of product, some glass and so on. Pair that with some cheap wood and you can get an idea of what's involved.

Have fun,

Laszlo

   Laszlo is wise, Laszlo is right!  :-)  I've only done 2 kits from CLC, a canoe many years ago and a Skerry I've just launched.  For those of us who are either new to it or limited in our shop tools and space, the kits are a blessing.  There are still plenty of smaller puzzles to sort and lots of handwork time to put in.  Even as a mechanical engineer, there are enough things to learn and tasks that I'm glad I didn't try it from scratch.  And I can see that you'd need twice as much space to lay one out from plans onto wood.  The wood cost is minimal if you factor in the value of your time.

My boss has made 2 CLC kayaks from scratch rather than kits, and he went with lauan plywood on one.  He spent more time redoing cracked pieces and extra epoxy, etc. than he ever saved on that one.

The paddleboards have a number of fairly elaborate internal frames that just on inspection, I wouldn't want to cut out by hand. Their kits, cut by their CNC machine, will be way more accurate than what I would likely do. 

Plunk down for good wood, or even better the whole kit.  Or if close enough, consider doing at least one in a class.

My Chesapeake 17 LT that I've just finished is probably heavier than the designed intended. I built from plans as the cost of getting a kit deliverd here to Turkey would be prohibitive. Add to that the plywood sizes are different here 2.2m x 1.7 m and quality plywood is non existent I tend to overdo it on the fibreglass to make up for deficiencies in the wood. Both the C17 LT and my 2 year old Skerry are fine (we don't even have sandy beaches so they get banged about a bit) but given the choice I'd go for the best wood you can afford.  Even for a SUP.

   If you plan to build from plans rather than the kit, then practicing scarf joints on cheap wood, like the thin ply panels at the local big-box home improvement store, is a good idea. You can perfect your technique before moving to the okoume. It's not that hard, and by the end of your second joint, you'll have a good feel. If you're planning to build two of the same kayak from plans, then doing the lofting on cheap ply and using that as templates cutting the hull panels together from the okoume with a router can be a time saver, and making the templates would be a good way to practice the scarf joints. You still have to pay for two set of plans, of course.

But if you're building from a kit, you don't need practice. All the tricky stuff is done for you. There are no scarf joints, just puzzle joints cut at CLC's facility.

   How much time have you got?  You can use big box luan, if you can find it, but you'll have to fill in voids, repair splits, and watch the ragged edges when you cut it. Think fine blades not fast rough cut.  I've done it with some sail boats and regretted it. Some problems translate through the finishes and will always be there like a "birth mark."

Now if your time is cheaper than the materials and you need to redneck construct it can be amusing.  I once took home a packing crate from the hanger and fashioned it into a 5 ft pram. It was a charactor boat that bobbed around. I had to put a big toe over one of the nail holes from its packing crate days to keep the water out.  I rowed it out of the slip area and across the start finish line on a race day to a lot of guffaws and head shakes.  It was worthy of a viking funeral, but fit nicely in the dumpster.

The beauty of the CLC CNC cut kits is the wood is quality and the pieces fit with minor tweaking.

   Deltaguy - I'm curious why one would need to purchase more than one set of plans, even if building more than one of the same boat? I would think the license to use the plans would include the right to (non-commercially) build as many versions of the same boat as your heart desires. Is there something I'm missing? 

On my Chesapeake 17LT plans it specifically says:

The purchase of plans or kit grants the right to build only one boat. Additional boats may be built for family members only after payment of a $30 licensing fee.

Now, English may be my second language but that second sentence seems wonderfully ambiguous. Does it mean that additional boats may be built only for family members (after the fee is paid), or that for family members only there is a fee, all others are free. Bet I can guess what they meant :-)

Laszlo

   I guess you only pay an extra thirty dollars, not the full plans price. I think it probably means you can only build additional boats for family memebers as bona fide gifts. Building for others might legally be considered commercial production, which might require some further negotiation with Mr. Harris.

   This thread could easily go astray at this point, so I'll just reiterate that my point was it's not a bad idea to practice something like scarf joints on cheap plywood before doing one on that okoume you had delivered from half-way across the continent, which would take a week or two to replace. If you plan to pay your thirty bucks to build his-and-hers (or his-and-his or hers-and-hers - who am I to judge?) kayaks, then you can make templates out of thin cheap ply for the hull panels to save time, and use those as practice for the woodworking skills.

   So as to your original question.  If you don't know woodworking, why would you build the harder route first.  The kits are there for precisely someone like you.  I do get that you might feel you could at least learn a lot no mater how painful by doing the hard run first.  Then when you get the precious kits you will be ready to go.  Or that what you really want "permision" to do is ditch the kits.  But just so we are clear you are doing it the hard way.  That's OK I designed my first canoe, and many boats since.  Big projects I get plans for as the resale makes it worth it.  But if you want a sufferfest, you can start with the tree...

   As to cheap wood....  start with the exec sumary:

1)  Money spent on wood is well spent if you think you will keep the boat.  I still own most of the boats I ever built.  Probably would have been better if I had used better materials, because 35 years later I still have them...  In some cases there are great cheap options, however in the 6mm and down range it can get tought to find reasonable alternative, the material gets too hard to make and too specific in use for appropriate options, though there are certianly some.  There are vastly cheaper options for 1/2"  But in the 3-4mm range your best option is marine grade or that 6566, or whatever it is called.  Good wood is also more fun to work with, so the time you spend will be more pleasurable, you deserve it.

2) Projects I made 35 years ago out of crap are still going strong.  Eminent players like the Gougeons, Browns, Marples, Hughes, and many others have used the cheap stuff.  Hughes even got doorskins approved for USCG passenger vessels at one point.

3)  After 25-35 years a few problems showed up due to times when I couldn't get to the boats, and stuff.  They were all easy to fix.  My dreaded scenario where the membrane would get violated and the whole thing fall appart, or could not be repaired never materialized.  I had a few major problems after a hatch  was left half installed and I got into a plane accident, and wasn't well enough to work on the boat until 5 or 10 years had passed.  But the repairs didn't take that long to do, and none of them required repainting the boat.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

- So good wood is good.

- Bad wood is good if you know how to grade every piece you are putting in the boat.  Kits aside, there is no guarantee, even 1088 is just a rubber stamp, you have to rate every piece that goes in the boat regardless of origin.  I learned that from an aircraft kit manufacturer.  They destructively tested every piece of wood sourced for the wing spar caps.

- Decisions you made to cheap out at the begining of the project may cause you to stall later when some difficulty pops up and your brain adds the excuse "why go on, you didn't use the right wood and it is just going to fall appart anyway".  Sounds silly but there are a lot of abandoned projects out there.  On the other hand, small projects that take only a few days to build shouldn't bog down.  So large projects have no credible resale value if they are a little unusual, so keeping costs to the marrow may be an worthwhile option.

- The rating rules for species and products in the marine world assume the materials are not encapsulated in epoxy.  If I had to choose between encapsulating and using sub marine grade, or using high end but no epoxy or glass, I would choose the epoxy every time.  Real wooden boats are kinda like gardening with frequent crop rotation; You prepare the feild and some seeds are planted.  Eventually you can't see the field for the growth, and then you have to take steps to restore the field.

One very important thing to keep in mind - the wood 35 years ago was very much better than it is today. Even the cheap doorskins were equal multi-ply with solid cores.

Today, thanks to the Walmart Effect (cheapness at any cost, quality and social impacts don't matter) and the permanent destruction of quality trees, cheap wood is mostly trash. So having 35 year old boats built from then cheap wood is not a guarantee that building from cheap wood today would fare as well.

Just something to keep in mind. Sometimes the good old days were.

Laszlo

   That is certainly true of the softwood lumber we get around here, it is not true of the plywood.  The only cheap thin stuff I use currently is amazing.  It has one of those anoying paper thin skins on the surface, and three balanced plies, then paper thin on the back.  It has exterior glue.  The stuff is stiffer on the 90 than the 0, which makes fair lines a little harder to get if you aren't computer lofting but doing something like an Instant boat, where there are some panles that are taken of already laid panel edges.  One you get it all up and on it's way the panels are stiffer, though, so the struggle is worth it.  I would not say it is anything like as good as the stuff that comes in kits, but I know what is what, so I can get away with it.

I'm OK and all that, but I think it is extremely unlikely that there are another 35 years to pass under my keel.  Even if there are I know I will be fine.  But when the first 35 slips past and you contemplate the realistic time line for your next project, I have nothing to worry about.

The cat, not the top of it, were made of left over doorskins from my try.  I bagged them into 6mm ply and used them for this boat, and a tender.  Odd boat, the boat isn't really the point.  When I made it, I wondered what would happen if I just left the stem out.  So all I did was smear a caulking like bead on each edge of the bow panels and press them together, of course the outside got some glass.  Anyway, was thrailering it last summer when after a loud noise I noticed it passing me in the outside lane, and then it was gone.  The whole trailer, the "bubble" stuffed with masses of our gear, the motor, took a brief sidetrip, then slammed into a light standard.  The port bow took the whole impact of a thousand or two pounds, and the only damage where the green tape is was som localized crushing. Some microballoons, and a little glass and it is ready for a few more decades at least.  The dirty paint is what awlgrip looks like after 25 years.

The oddball boat above is a tactical poling skiff, uses the same motor as the cat.  It is always a question whether these kinds of things are going to come out as one hopes.  Then when they do one wonders whether the 12 dollar ply was really such a good idea.  Obviously going for a bright finish you wouldn't smear leftover bog on the taped seams, or use cheap ply for that mater.

 Do not use cheap plywood.  I have a kayak that someone used cheap Luan to make the bulkheads (the rest of it is made of Okume) and the wood de-laminated despite being coated with epoxy on both sides.  The glue they use on that stuff is not waterproof.  I think I still have the old delaminated bulkheads i took out of it on the trash pile in my shop, If I can find them I will post some photos so everyone can see what happens to luan.