Thanks Paul for your suggestions. I thought I would plane down from 1/4" to 3/16". I like your idea of the scarf joint, too. Thanks again. BTW, my apologies to the forum for the double post. My thanks to Shawn for his response, also.

: Absolutely. Have fun!

: Since you are starting with a square beam you can rip it first into boards of
: whatever thickness you choose -- and you can choose the grain direction in
: these boards so that you get the grain direction you prefer in your final
: strips. If you make these boards 3/4 to 7/8 inch thick you may have just
: about enough boards to rip all the strips you'll need from a single beam.
: If you go for 3/16 inch thick strips instead of 1/4 inch strips you will
: not only get a 25% reduction in wood weight in the boat, but you'll get a
: few more strips from that beam.

: You may find it faster to make nominal 2 x 6 boards from your beam and then
: rip those into strips. Then you can stack your 2 by 1/4 strips and rip 5
: to 10 at one time down to about 7/8 by 1/4.

: Personally, after making the thiner boards from that beam, I'd make a couple
: of nominal 1x3 or 2x3 boards and scarf them together with a 2 foot long
: tapered joint, giving me a 20 foot long board, which I would rip into some
: full-length strips.

: Good luck with your project.

: Paul G. Jacobson