Quite right, grainwise. Your post doesn't mention steam, but depending on the thickness of your strips, another factor comes into play also. Steam softens the lignin bonds between the long wood fibers, allowing them to shift a bit in relation to each other during bending. When cooled, the lignin rehardens in (more or less) the new position, allowing the piece to keep its new shape. The rub comes if you use kiln-dried stock. The kiln renders the lignin unable to soften, even with steam, so bending becomes an adventure.

The easy solution is to cut the strips thinner, say 1/8" or so, and then it doesn't matter whether the stock has been kiln-dried. In fact, with strips that thin you won't need steam at all, just epoxy. Vaclav shows a nifty trick at www.oneoceankayaks, illustrated in the pic and available at the website below it. Grab enough strips for the whole stem, line them up and glue only the center 6" of the 6'-long stack. Next day, cut the bunch right in the middle of the glue joint, and use half on each end of the boat. The partial glue job keeps the bunch from flopping around, and it's really fast. I used this method on my Redfish Silver, and recommend it highly. Thanks, Vaclav.

: ... or any other wood, for that matter, I assume its easier to use flat-grain
: strips than edge-grain strips. Instinct tells me this is right but it
: doesn't hurt to check. This would be for the internal and external stems -
: a bit more of a bend on the stern than the bow, but still nothing like the
: coaming lip, as discussed in the earlier thread.