Finding Timber for Japanese Boatbuilding in Australia

By far the most difficult part of preparing to build two traditional Japanese boats with Douglas Brooks was finding suitable timber here in Australia.

The short version?

We couldn't.

At least, not in the quantities, dimensions, species and price range required to make the project practical.

So the boats would ultimately be built largely from timber imported from Japan.

That sounds like a fairly straightforward conclusion when written in a sentence. Getting there was considerably less straightforward.

What follows is the story of the timber we considered, the suppliers we called, the samples we sent to Douglas, the species we became briefly and irrationally excited about, and the reasons most of them eventually disappeared from the list.

Consider this partly useful information and partly therapy for the person who had to organise the whole thing.

Start with the Timber You Have

Almost every Japanese woodworker I have known has had a wonderfully thrifty attitude towards timber.

When we were organising kanna-making classes with Takami Kawai in 2019, I asked whether we would need to import Japanese white oak — shirogashi — for the plane bodies.

His response was basically:

“Don't you have any timber in Australia?”

Fair point.

Japanese plane bodies are traditionally made from white or red oak because those timbers are hard, stable, durable and — importantly — available to the makers using them.

There may theoretically be some even more perfect species hiding somewhere in the world, but if you cannot buy it in the dimensions you need, at a price you can afford, it is not a particularly useful solution.

So we wanted to approach the boatbuilding project in the same way.

Instead of immediately deciding that a Japanese boat must be built from Japanese timber, we asked:

What properties does the timber actually need, and what can we find locally that has them?

What Does Timber for This Kind of Boat Need to Do?

The first requirement is softness.

The seams of these boats are fitted together with hand saws before being edge-nailed. Done properly, those seams become extremely tight, watertight and almost invisible.

Fitting them requires a timber that responds well to repeated saw passes. The builder needs to be able to remove tiny amounts of material predictably, while the saw leaves useful striations in the kerf.

The timber also needs enough flexibility to be persuaded into shape with levers, props and temporary fixing.

During construction, the side planks are bent into position alongside the bottom, restrained and nailed while under tension. A timber that is excessively hard or unwilling to move makes this process considerably more difficult.

Then There Is the Small Matter of Size

We weren't shopping for ordinary furniture boards.

We needed pieces approximately:

• 300 mm wide or more
• Around 25–30 mm thick
• Approximately 5 metres long

Finding a timber with the right working properties is one thing.

Finding it in those dimensions is another thing entirely.

Our Benchmark: Sugi

In Japan, the timber commonly used for boats of this type is sugi (Cryptomeria japonica), often translated as Japanese cedar.

One of the measurements Douglas uses when assessing potential alternatives is Janka hardness.

The Janka test measures the force required to embed a steel ball into timber. It certainly does not tell you everything about how a species will behave in boatbuilding, but it gives us a useful reference point for relative hardness.

Sugi sits at approximately 1420 N in the figures we were working with.

When Douglas teaches boatbuilding in the United States, he has successfully used Eastern White Pine (Pinus strobus), which comes in at approximately 1690 N.

Better still, he can have local sawmills cut it into the enormous slabs and lengths required without needing to sell a kidney.

That gave us a useful working range.

Now we just needed an Australian timber that was soft enough, flexible enough, available in huge sections and affordable.

Easy.

Western Red Cedar: Perfect Until You Try to Buy It

Western Red Cedar looked excellent on paper.

At around 1560 N, its Janka hardness sits very close to the range we wanted.

Then I started asking people for pieces around 300 mm wide and five metres long.

One bloke laughed at me.

Another quoted approximately $1,200 per piece for material only about half the width we actually needed.

Western Red Cedar was scratched from the list.

The Tasmanian Dream

I loved the idea of building a Japanese boat in Tasmania from Tasmanian timber.

Imagine the smell.

Imagine the colour.

Imagine the beautiful local story.

Now imagine the price of a kidney.

Double it.

There is also a much bigger question around the use of Tasmania's slow-growing native timbers.

Australia has not exactly covered itself in glory when it comes to the historical treatment of native forests. Species such as Huon Pine grow extraordinarily slowly, and old stocks cannot simply be regarded as though another equivalent tree will be ready next Tuesday.

For a project consuming large sections of timber, that matters.

Huon Pine and Celery Top Pine could be discounted on working properties anyway, with the hardness figures we found sitting above 4000 N.

And Then There Was King Billy Pine

King Billy Pine, on the other hand, looked tantalising.

The approximate hardness figure we found was around 1200 N, although we weren't able to confirm that number to our satisfaction. It also has a reputation for excellent workability and straight grain.

In other words: potentially fantastic.

It is also about as common as hen's teeth.

I eventually found a contact in Tasmania who knew of a pallet of King Billy tucked away somewhere.

They very kindly explained that the timber would be worth something in the region of $30,000 per cubic metre.

They also weren't going to sell it to me.

Righto.

Tasmania was not going to save us.

What About the Timbers We Can Actually Buy?

So we attacked the problem from the opposite direction.

Instead of asking, “What species is perfect?”, we asked:

“What can we actually obtain in large sections at a vaguely realistic price?”

We had some experience here.

Radiata Pine was available.

We had used Hoop Pine in kumiko classes with Wiggy.

We had previously brought in a cubic metre of large Monterey Cypress sections for our teahouse build with Greg and Ryo.

And we already had some enormous pieces of Norfolk Island Pine sitting in the workshop.

Unfortunately, these species were considerably harder than the Sugi benchmark.

The Monterey Cypress Experiment

To make sure we weren't dismissing them purely on numbers, we sent Douglas a sample of Monterey Cypress (Cupressus macrocarpa).

This introduced species was widely planted across parts of Tasmania, Victoria and New South Wales, often as a windbreak.

Douglas tested it and felt that producing the extremely tight, watertight saw-fitted seams required for these boats would be difficult.

Could we perhaps have made it work?

Maybe.

But the first boat was going to be launched in front of hundreds of people at the Australian Wooden Boat Festival.

That felt like a fairly public setting in which to discover that “maybe” actually meant “no”.

We decided not to gamble on it.

Paulownia: So Close...

There was one species on my shortlist softer than Sugi according to the numbers we had: Paulownia.

At approximately 1330 N, it looked extremely promising.

Paulownia has also been plantation-grown in Australia and is well known among surfboard builders, who do all sorts of beautiful things with the stuff.

Fantastic.

All we had to do was buy some.

I'll be buggered if I could find anyone willing or able to sell us enough.

Surfboard suppliers didn't have sufficient quantities in the sections we required. Timber retailers told me they had not seen large pieces for some time. Numbers and email addresses associated with plantations disappeared into a communications black hole.

If you are secretly sitting on a magnificent supply of large Australian-grown Paulownia, I would still quite like to know you.

The Honourable Mentions

A few other species made appearances during the great timber hunt.

Silver Quandong sounded promising, but at the time I couldn't obtain a useful sample or enough reliable information to take it further.

Sitka Spruce looked interesting at around 2270 N, but I couldn't find a practical local source in the sections required.

Monkey Puzzle also appeared on the list with a promising hardness figure, but once again the problem was actually finding the timber.

A theoretical timber is not much use when you have boats to build.

And Then There Was Jelutong

Carvers will probably know Jelutong.

This Southeast Asian timber is very soft — approximately 1740 N in our figures — with a fine, even texture that makes it pleasant to carve while still capable of holding detail.

Furniture makers have traditionally been somewhat less excited by it because the grain is not exactly shouting for attention.

For us, boring grain was not a problem.

Soft, workable timber in giant dimensions was extremely exciting.

And then, finally, we found some.

Luke at All-Class Timbers in Port Kembla had milled a Jelutong tree.

The boards were around 300 mm wide, approximately an inch thick, and ranged from roughly 2.8 to 5.8 metres long.

Bingo.

I bought everything longer than four metres.

It was enough for one boat.

I did not care.

I needed a win.

Unfortunately, we still needed more timber.

So We Went to Japan

Eventually, we reached the point where the practical answer was staring us in the face.

We called on some of the wonderful friends and contacts we have built relationships with in Japan, bit the bullet, and invested as much as we could reasonably set aside in Japanese timber.

The shipment was predominantly Sugi and Hinoki.

We bought dedicated boatbuilding sections.

We bought house-construction sections.

We bought shiplapped cladding.

And, because shipping timber halfway across the world makes very little sense in tiny quantities, we brought considerably more than the two boats themselves required.

The excess timber would later become available through Japanese Tools Australia.

Right Down to the Wire

The container was due to arrive at our Kogarah warehouse only a couple of weeks before Douglas was due to land in Hobart.

And people wonder why I bite my fingernails.

But we had finally made it.

The timber was organised.

The tools were being sharpened.

The classes could go ahead.

After months spent thinking about Janka hardness, freight, board widths, plantation contacts, sawmilling and species availability, I could finally look forward to switching back into woodworking mode.

The next question was considerably more enjoyable:

How do you turn roughly forty metres of timber into a boat in five days?

That, thankfully, was Douglas's department.

All the best,
Mitch

Timbers We Considered

For anyone else wandering down the rabbit hole of relatively soft timbers, below is the working comparison table we assembled during the search.

These figures were gathered as working references for the project rather than as a definitive timber specification. Natural timber varies, published figures can differ between sources, and values marked with a question mark were uncertain in our original notes.