: how thick do you get your wood from lumber yards? 1/4 inch?

I cut my own strips from 1" thick boards, 5.5" wide. This way, you just slice the strips of the edge of the board. (If I had a thickness planer at the time, I would have taken the boards down to around 3/4" thickness before cutting the strips) If the plank starts out flat grained, then the strips will come off edge-grained.

: My question is for the people who cut their own strips... do
: you also cut cove and beads (that's the term.. right?)? How many people
: out there just use the rectangular strips in their kayaks? It looks a lot
: easier (always a plus on the first boat) using the curved boards.

As with many subjects on this board, there's no right or wrong answer. Merely pros & cons & different experiences.

Personally, I routed bead & cove edges for the strips I used on the hull, and then used plain, beveled edge strips for the deck.

Being a rookie, I found the B&C strips easier to use. There was just one problem. Some of my beads & coves weren't precisely centered, so this FORCED the strips out of alignment during stripping, creating slight steps between strips. Those steps eventually sanded out, of course, but it probably required much more sanding than it should have, to get a fair surface.

After having built the hull, using beveled edges on the deck went surprisingly easy. With care, the strips can be aligned very accurately, and I had far less sanding to do on the deck, than on the hull.

I think there's a place for both methods. Using full length strips, around curves that would require a rolling bevel (a bevel that changes its angle along the length of the strip), I'd prefer to use bead & cove. I'd just make sure that I do a better job next time cutting the B&C. For shorter strips (as on a patterned deck), with relatively simple and mild curvature, I'd opt for bevelled edges.

Bottom line - B&C strips definitely made stripping my hull easier (despite the extra sanding I had to do), and by the time I got to the deck, I was confident enough to switch to beveled edges.

Good Luck - you've come to the right place - I learned as much from the folks on this board as I did from the various books.

Ken