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Re: Material: Plywood strips?
By:Andy Waddington
Date: 4/2/2008, 12:01 pm
In Response To: Material: Plywood strips? (Q Ajaqer)

: Has anyone made a stripper sawing strips from 4mm thick plywood? or am I
: crazy??

I made the error of buying a part-built strip Guillemot (on ebay) without
having made quite detailed enough enquiries. It turned out to be rather
badly stripped, mostly using thin plywood. When you sand it, you tend to
go through the surface veneer, which is often thin (I don't think this
stuff was marine ply, which often has thicker face veneers). The result
is just plain ugly. I had to unstrip the whole boat and have yet to start
stripping over the forms again. That was an expensive firewood purchase :-(

Ply works well for stitch and glue, and might be OK for strip if you were
planning to colour the boat with opaque resin or paint, but even so, the
difficulty of sanding when the grain suddenly changes direction as you go
through the first veneer would make me think that this was a REALLY bad
idea. With narrow strips (rather than the large panels of an S&G) you also
lose most of the benefit of having the grain in different layers at right
angles, as all the grain that crosses the strips just runs out at each
strip edge, contributing little strength. Your boat would be heavier,
weaker, uglier, and harder to build. Nice cedar strips are easier, cheaper,
and look so much better.

Andy

Messages In This Thread

Material: Plywood strips?
Q Ajaqer -- 3/28/2008, 10:06 pm
Re: Material: Plywood strips?
Andy Waddington -- 4/2/2008, 12:01 pm
Re: Material: Plywood strips?
Charlie -- 3/28/2008, 11:47 pm
Re: Material: Plywood strips?
Q Ajaqer -- 3/29/2008, 1:05 pm
Re: Material: Plywood strips?
prasad bhatla -- 3/29/2008, 3:48 pm