: Been lurking here for a while - great site. One of these days, I'll clean out
: the garage and actually start a project (or take over Pop's 2.5 car garage
: while he's wintering down south).

: A while back I got the Gilpatrick book on strip canoes and he suggests just
: planing each strip, rather than doing the whole bead & cove routing
: thing.

: I'm sure that some of you have tried this - how has it worked for you? Is it
: more trouble than it's worth?

: (my woodworking experience is more than beginner, but less than intermediate.
: For you WW people out there - I'd say that I'm a Class II+ woodworker.)

It is not that hard to bevel each strip to fit. My first kayak was built this way. Currently I only use bead and cove below the waterline on my designs.

The amount of strip beveling will very from design to design. On my kayaks I like a flared hull from the bilge to the sheer line for added secondary stablity. This produces a rather flat surface area that needs little or no beveling. And my kayak decks do not have a great deal of curve to them so very little beveling is needed.

Most of Nick's designs have more of a continuous curve around the sheer into the deck so more beveling would be needed. Nick can speak to this in more detail.

The trick I've found to beveling strips is to keep 1/3 of each strip clamped in place from one stem and work on the bevel. This allows you to keep the strip under control while bending the strip in a convex arc so the plane will move smoothly, taking down the edge. This also makes it easy to quickly put the strip in place to judge how well the bevel is working, without walking back and forth from a bench to bevel and test.

You will be making what is called a rolling bevel in that the angle and amount of the bevel will change from the stems (little or no bevel) to the center of the hull (the most bevel). In all cases your goal is to bevel just enough to make the outside edges of the strips contact in a tight joint.

All the best,

Rob Macks
Laughing Loon CC&K
www.LaughingLoon.com