Plug for environmentally conscious, domestic wood choices

[Bob Kinsman]

With teak (the good stuff) following in the footsteps of mahogany and other high grade, overly exploited exotics or rain forest specials, I had an interesting experience recently.

When considering toe rails for a smaller boat (J24), I was presented with over-priced plastic (manufacturer's current material of choice), over-priced teak (quoted $30+ bdft for good clear grade stock), or even more money to pay someone else to mill said teak.

Black locust, on the other hand, is available domestically in New England, is potentially more durable in teak depending on installation, and close to a power of 10 less expensive. A single 8/4 board, <10 bdft, carefully selected, yielded around 60ft of finished milled toe rail materials that are sure to stand out. $45.00 and a ton of fun with the table saw. Ok maybe not a ton of fun, I was surprised at how prone to burn marks the material is, and I was wearing a full faced respirator the whole time.

But it doesn't contribute to deforestation.

I'll have to get some photos put up here later, but looking forward to the result on the boat!

[Bob Kinsman]

Every project of mine typically starts with some need to do something nice for someone else (wedding gift, birthday, etc), or some other, more pressing need to get the most out of my hard earned cash!

In this case, a bit of fiberglass repair required the removal of a 25 year old toe rail, which basically self destructed in the removal process. Market options say "pay for teak $$$$" or "pay too much for PVC."

Enter plank of black locust.
Remove the free bark that comes with the plank
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Straighten one edge of said plank, joint to a useable fence reference face.
Rip repeatedly. With a saw of adequate power, this stuff is tough!
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Determining the best utilization of your plank takes a good bit of figuring before you do any cutting. I figured that I needed at least 5/4 rough, but in selecting a plank, the best we came up with was a nice piece of flat sawn 8/4.
This allowed me to stack the toe rail profiles bottom to bottom with a staggered cut with the dado stack.
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Careful cutting yields a boat load of blanks. In the end I feel like this helped justify the effort and time in setting up for accurate and safe handling of the strips through the table saw and router table. Doing all the work for one 8' length seems nuts. The experience of cutting an entire boat worth plus a spare should we mess up or break one, priceless.
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And the results are fantastic. With a bit of air, sun, and oil, should weather out to a nice redish brown, and left untended will go silver similar to teak.
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So before you go chasing after exotics for your next boat project, consider butchering some domestics!

Bob.

[Wade Lippman]

Black locust moves like crazy, but other than that it is great. I made a spoon out of 10 years ago. It has been through the dish washer 1,000 times and still looks good.
It is also the absolute best wood for wood stoves; almost like coal. Not so good for fireplaces, as there is little flame.

Although it grows all around here, and you can usually find some cut up in the street after storms, it is not available commercially. Nobody wants it, so nobody sells it.

[Curt Harms]

Black locust moves like crazy, but other than that it is great. I made a spoon out of 10 years ago. It has been through the dish washer 1,000 times and still looks good.
It is also the absolute best wood for wood stoves; almost like coal. Not so good for fireplaces, as there is little flame.

Although it grows all around here, and you can usually find some cut up in the street after storms, it is not available commercially. Nobody wants it, so nobody sells it.

If some trendy media types pick up on "There's a local wood that is as weather and rot resistant as rain forest woods and is non-toxic and evironmentally friendly and maybe growing in your back yard!!" the lack of demand could change. Remember cherry was a secondary wood not so long ago.

[Bob Kinsman]

I'm along the thinking you've got the Curt, where black locust, properly used, prominently displayed, and appropriately promoted could help change long term behaviors and open up an economical and more ecologically sound alternative. I hope that fellow woodworkers will avoid some of the stereotypes and legends that may propagate on the internet and give working with this material a shot on their own! If nothing else, when considering a project in teak consider using locust for practice and/or set-up . . . the results might be surprising.

[Art Mann]

Interesting and possibly useful piece of information there. Thanks.

[Bob Kinsman]

Update, after a couple of weeks in the sun (now that the sun is out in New England), the black locust rail has gone from a greenish-yellow, really blond, to a medium red brown. Coat of wiped on teak oil (garden boat shop variety) and it looks real sharp. Can't wait to get around the rest of the boat to replace all the rails.

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Bob.