> thanks for your b board response. Using no staples, how did you hold the
> shear and other bow and stern strips with lots of sweep in place? Hot glue
> just isn't working for me. I've tried the fixtures in Nick's book with
> clamsps but that's cumbersome and doesn't work very well, especially when
> the two strips below want to give way because you are pressing down on
> them. I'd appreciate any suggestions

If the strips don't bend into place easily then use narrower ones which won't spring back at you. YES, you will spend a bit more time because you have to rip these pieces, and put on more of them. NO, this is not wasting any of your time as you don't have to fight the whole process. Once you get some strips on the frames you`ll have something to anchor the next strips against.

Something you might try: With bead and cove strips, cut a few pieces about 3 inches long. Staple these to the frames as clamps to hold the strips in place. Put one on each side of the strip, or pair of strips you want to secure. The bead and cove grips the edges of your good strip, and the staple goes in this waste piece. You can reuse them a few times before they crack from too many staples in them. You can use brads in them, too, if you need something to take a bit more side force.

With square edged strips you can try s similar, but different, idea. Since you don't have that nice edge shaping to hold the strip down, use a 3 inch long scrap to push the edge of your strip into position. Then take another short length of wood strip and set it so that spans the line between the good strip and the scrap. Staple this to the scrap piece, and it will hold down the good wood strip, without putting any holes in it.

For real severe cases where even brads won't hold the things together, use screws in the scrap pieces that surround your good strips. Instead of driving 1000 staples into the strips you will be driving up to 2000 screws alongside those strips. Actually it is the same 100 or 200 screws, installed and removed time and again. A cordless electric screwdriver is the desired tool for this.

Hope these ideas help.

Paul Jacobson