I've been working on
> a guillemot kayak and it is coming out beautifully for my first kayak.

You imply you will be building at least one more kayak. Gotta love this sort of enthusiasm.

> The only problem is that after stripping half of it I noticed many
> gaps and cracks in between the strips.

Since you are only half finished, concentrate on doing the rest with fewer gaps. Pull those strips closer together and use more staples to hold them tight. I'm assuming you are NOT using bead and cove strips, but strips with straight edges.

It is basic geometry, as you lay those square edged strips around the curved forms, you can get the inside edge of the strips to touch, but the outside edges are going to be slightly apart. As long as the inside edges touch, you'll have no significant problems.

Get a plane and use it to slightly bevel the edges of the strips so they match better. It only takes a minute or two per strip, and you don't have to be perfect here. It may be that you will put on fewer strips in a day, but there will be fewer cracks to fill later.

Consider setting up a saw, router, sander or plane to bevel the edges of your remaining strips. Just about any of these tools will work.

Currently the strips look like this: ---- l l l l l l l l l l l l ----

If you plane the edges at an angle, you'll get strips that are parallelograms in cross section. When you butt the edges of these strips together they won't interlock like bead and cove, but they will overlap a slight amount. this doesn't remove the gap between the strips, but it does disguise it. This illustration is crude, and the angle is exagerated. you don't have to make the angle anywhere near as steep as the / on my keyboard seems to show. But this is the general idea of what you want to try:

/ / l / l l l l l l l l / l/ /

Either that or buy some bead and cove router bits for the next boat.

> I was thinking I would use
> some kind of wood filler to fill these up, because there are enough
> of them and the are significantly noticable.

If you ripped these strips yoursef you should have lots of sawdust. If you do any sanding you will have lots of sanding dust. Use sawdust with epoxy, or wood glue, on the larger gaps. Use the finer sanding dust with either epoxy or wood glue on the finer cracks. Before filling the cracks, reach underneath and put masking tape over the crack so the filler doesn`t drip through. If you make a stiff mixture of filler, use a putty knife to force it into the cracks as you apply it. Even if you have a lot of cracks, you probably won't need more than an ounce or two of filler.

Avoiding gaps not only is easier than filling them, but it is also some reassurance that you have those strips glued together well.

I was wondering what
> any of you might do in this type of situation, because I dont know
> if there is a wood filler that would work well with fiberglass and
> epoxy.

Fill and sand, and fill again and sand lots more :)

Best of luck on this Paul Jacobson