> After seeing Susan Van Leuven's book, Illustrated Guide to Wood Strip
> Canoe Building, I decided to try her technique for stapless stripping.

Can you post the contact information on this book for those who may be interested in getting a copy (like me): Publisher, their address if available, copyright date, etc. would help. ISBN number would be nice, too. Do you know a supplier who would sell this through mailorder?

Why bother with the extra wood strip? Seems to me there are a few options that would work as well.

A) Drill holes about 1/2 inch in from the outside edge of the forms. Plug a hole with a dowel rod wherever needed and clamp to that. When the strip is securely glued, remove the clamp and reposition the dowel rod in the next hole. Tap it out with a hammer if any glue has dripped on it.

B) for get the holes and dowel rods. Get some small cheap 'c' clamps and tighten them on your forms where necessary, then clamp to them with the spring clamps to hold the strips in place. If you use webbing rope you thread it through the big 'c' opening in the clamp. If you need additional side pressure you can rotate the 'c' clamp to push against the edge of the strip (CAREFULLY so you don't mash the bead or cove face) You can use webbing, rope or bungie cord to maintain that edge pressuure by looping the cord through the 'c' part of the clamp and pulling it to some anchor point.

C) use 'c' clamps to hold short waste strips to the forms to create those lips that you want to clamp to. You can move them around to wherever they may be needed. They can be reused, and it is faster and cheaper than cutting the full length lip from a large sheet of plywood.

On the other hand, staples are still fast, easy and cheap. I've never had a person complain about the rows of specks from the staple holes, and in fact it was an easy way to show the curious throngs how I'd built the boat. People can understand that the boat was stapled together. It is a simple concept that works well.

Of all the *MANY* passionate discussions on this board about relative strengths of various processesI can not recal everhearing one suggestion that using staples compromised strength to the slightest degree. That in itself is amazing, particularly considering the heat that topics like this frequently generate. Hopefully I have not opened a can of worms by mentioning this.

Hope these ideas help.

Paul Jacobson