Hi everyone,

I'm building a Redfish Spring Run, stripping the hull right now. Things have been going pretty well so far. This is a little hard to explain, but here goes:

I've gotten about 7 or 8 strips up from the sheer without any problems. I'm using bead & cove strips, cove side up. I put in 2 tapered cheater strips so the strips are running pretty much parallel to the waterline. I'm to the point where the inside stems are covered. It's the next strip that I'm having problems with. I'm ending up with an extremely long (1 to 2 foot) taper on both ends with a rolling bevel on it. The strip has a significant amount of twist in it also which makes it harder. I'm having trouble getting a nice clean fit, especially with the cove on the mating strip on the opposite side. If I can get past these 1 or 2 next strips I should be into the "football" section and I think things will get easier.

This is my second strip building project, I finished a strip canoe last spring, but with the wider beam on the canoe I never ran into this problem since the tapers weren't so severe.

I know I can always fill the gaps with thickened epoxy and sand it smooth, but I'd like to avoid that as much as possible. I was wondering if anyone else here has run into this problem and what you did to solve it. Both Nick's book and Joe Greenley's plans/instructions don't seem to run into problems with this.

Thanks, Steve