white oak vs. red oak

[mrjoel]

ok, i know that there have been a lot of threads on the use of these two woods in boat building on this forum. even just recently in the post by audasea, and i have asked the question myself here already, from the insight of the guys on here more knowlegable than me i found that red oak is more prone to rot because of reasons involving the grains structure and some odd words that i couldnt remember and i took their word for it to read it but didnt really have a picture in my head of what all those words meant until the other day when i was running my block plane over a piece of red oak and the shavings were falling into the mountain of white oak shavings that have accumulated on the floor of my shop. anyhow, i got the idea to compare them and heres what i found when holding them up to the light..
http://i123.photobucket.com/albums/o303/mrjoelsef/DSC00804.jpg

here are two shavings of the same thickness, the top shaving being red oak and the bottom of white. this set me strait in understanding the meaning of having more of an open grain structure in red oak that made it more prone to rot than white. i just found that interesting and thought it might help others like myself who need a simple visual aid to go along with the proper definitions. :)

[Paul Pless]

Joel, how's about posting a larger picture of your boat, I can barely make out your avatar.

cheers,

Paul

[Paul Girouard]

Sure Joel :rolleyes: ya really wanted to show us you could sharpen a plane iron didn't ya :D :cool:

[ssor]

If you cross cut red oak with a very sharp saw you can blow smoke through it. with white oak the tylosis prevent that. But I think that there are compounds in white oak that inhibit decay. That is not to say that red oak will rot as quickly as birch.

[mrjoel]

Sure Joel :rolleyes: ya really wanted to show us you could sharpen a plane iron didn't ya :D :cool:

hah! if anything that i post on here could be construde as something remotly show off worthy amongst all these craftsmen then im flattered..in the most humble sense.

[Mrleft8]

The closer to the water a piece of Oak gets, the whiter it gets...

[ishmael]

A lot depends on environment. Red oak, because it's the oak commonly available up here, has been used for open small boat framing to good effect. Close it in, especially farther south with longer season and higher humdidity, and it's going to hell in a relative hurry.

I think it was LFH who said of good white oak, "It looks like laminated cat gut." Because the pore structure is blocked, and it don't soak the water, it is vastly superior. You can take a three foot piece of quartered red oak, stick one end in a bucket, blow on the other, and you'll have bubbles.

[Jay Greer]

One interesting thing about red oak is that the porosity of the material allows one to soak CPS or Cuprinol clean through from one end to the other. Now I have never wanted to commit, potentaily expensive, sin of framing with red oak, but the idea has crossed my mind.
Last year I was forced to replace a chine log of red oak that got mixed into another builders wood pile. The rotten stuff came out by the handfull! The opposite log of white oak was fully intact.
Jay

[Bob Smalser]

The closer to the water a piece of Oak gets, the whiter it gets...

Read the books out there by boatbuilders, and there's no shortage of them who occasionally use "Grey Oak." It all oxidizes to the same color.

That doesn't make it a good practice on any level. Pressure-treated hemlock doesn't last significantly longer in a fencepost than good cedar heartwood. Treat the cedar post with copper napthenate followed by tar, and you have a wash.