The perils of rescuing timber
- Sam Smith
- Jul 9
- 2 min read
Tuesday 8th July
I want to get the boat made by 14th August. That is day 100 of the 100 Tigers Project. That gives me about 40 days or so to get it done. It's hard to know how long that is. I'm working as if it's not long, and I think if I take my eye off the ball, then it isn't long. But if I am focused, I think that's a fair amount of time.
However there are difficulties and unknowns :
I don't have a space to build the boat
I am finding the wood - not buying it
Re: the space, I have wood stored at home and at the studio. It's on the 5th floor at the studio, which is very time-consuming to ferry up and down stairs. Ideally, I would have a big yard that I could work on the boat and have all my tools, but I don't. Even getting the right tools to the right place is something that sucks time and energy. If I'm working at home, I have to make sure I bring the correct tools from the studio. This rarely happens. As for the space to construct the boat, my current plan is to make it in manageable parts off-site (not on the canal), ferry it to the canal and build it on the water! That story is for another day...
As for the issue of finding the wood, this adds a lot of time. Sourcing the wood and loading it into the car then the studio (5th floor!) takes time. If I got it delivered it would all come at once, whereas I have been collecting this stuff for almost a month now.

On top of that, the wood comes with nails and screws poking out of it so I have to de-nail it which is also time consuming.
The third issue with using reclaimed wood is that it tends not to come in long lengths. From the timber yard, you can get 4.8m lengths of 4x2, which is almost the entire length of the boat. Whereas I don't have that luxury, so I'm having to join the wood end-to-end using a fancy joint called a scarf joint. Each one takes at least 40 minutes to make. For the perimeter of the deck it's going to take at least a day to cut the joins to make one continuous length.

Yesterday I went on a 3 hour round-trip to collect wood from two different properties which were clearing out and renovating. The first had wood which was relatively new but absolutely riddled with nails and all up on the third floor. The second place the wood had far fewer nails but was quite weathered. I wouldn't say it was rotten though, which is the main thing. It is weathered NOT rotten!
Driving back to the studio with a full load of wood was quite nerve-wracking - there was a lot of creaking and going round left-hand turns with a stack of naily wood to my left was terrifying. If that fell on me, I would not be a happy. I drove slowly and floated round the corners like a ghost; safe journey home. Now I have to spend a day de-nailing and possibly planing the wood.
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