Now that I have a bit of time to work on the boat again, it's time for a quick update. I've (barely)had a chance to epoxy on the bottom stringers on two of the lengthwise frames, a major achievement considering how crazy it's been at work(been called in several times over the past couple of weeks). Now is where things get fun. I know that bass, spruce and fir are fairly soft woods that can be damaged easily. Due to how I'm planning to build the sponsons, I decided it might be better to go with harder wood. Since the boat is being built using birch plywood, I felt the obvious choice would be to use birch for the bulnoses and blocking in the front of the sponsons where it will be exposed. What I failed to anticipate is that birch isn't readably available so it's taken me two days to find some without having to order on line. I know some are going to say "Why use birch?" The most easily to understand answer is that birch is twice as hard as the readily available firs. Using the Janka Hardness Scale, the typical fir has a rating of 660, that being the softest of the normally used domestic woods. Yellow birch, on the other hand, has a rating of 1260. Now, for those like me that have never heard of the Janka Scale, it's a measurement of the force(in pounds in the US) needed to embed a .444"(11.277mm) ball half way into the wood. Getting back to the finding the birch, I ended up finding only one place that carried any birch(other than plywood) and they only sell it in 2ft(61cm) lengths. Needless to say, I figure it's better to have too much with costs skyrocketing, so I bit the bullet and bought a 4ft(122cm) piece, spending $20 in the process. At this point, I think I have all the wood I'll need to build the boat so it's time to start making sawdust