:Scraping does nothing to create a fair surface. The scraper will ride up and :over small irregularities. While

it will knock off corners, it otherwise conforms to the existing surface. A :small random orbital sander will

also conform to unfair surfaces. This is fine if you do a good job laying :the strips,

Just my point. Take the time to do a good job applying the strips. Take the time to do a good job applying the strips. Pre-fit each strip and take the time to do a good job applying the strips. All together now....

I love planes, I love the cute little curls of wood. But learning to sharpen one and dealing with the conflicting grain of a strip hull with concave and convex surfaces is definitely from the Marquis de Sade school of woodworking for a beginner. By all means learn to sharpen a plane and use it to trim and fit strips. A beginner will have success here.

There is no comparison of the work of sharpening a plane blade with the ease of sharpening a paint scraper. Run the edge on a sander and touch the edge with a finger. It if feels sharp, it is. There are no crude tools only crude woodworkers. The scraper does its task well and takes much less time to learn to use.

A ROS with 60 grit can fair very nicely thank you. If you can see it will take it down. You simply hold it over that spot a little longer. You use a long fairing board to fair, and you say you use a long jack plane to level flats on your hulls. Then following the same idea it make more sense to fair with a 5" diameter sanding disk that has four time the surface area of a block plane.

But I’m surprised. The you imply that it is normal to have to remove quite a bit of wood in some spots to fair your hulls.

If you have to remove so much material to fair the hull or deck that you need a plane to do the job I'd say there is something wrong.

Perhaps the suspect may be the practice of using duct tape on station edges. Duct tape will not allow excess glue from the strips to stick the hull to the stations. Duct tape won’t allow anything to stick. This may sound good, but how do you expect the hull to retain its shape if there is nothing holding it to the stations?

I tried using duct tape once on station edges and it was apparent to me that my hull came loose in some places. Perhaps this is more apparent because I use 3/16" strips instead of 1/4". I can certainly see this as a problem especially for home builders who take weeks to strip a boat. Normal changes in humidity will cause the wood to move enough to break any adhesion to the duct tape.

I use masking tape with staples and nothing with hot glue. I want my strips to stay put until I knock off the forms. If you whack your forms from the side there is very little damage to the interior wood. I can’t remember having to fill any divots from this method.

Put all that time and skill development into stripping your boat to the best of your ability instead of sharpening and learning to use a plane. The idea is to be successful in building your boat. Forget about learning to use a plane so you can go at that old oak floor in the back room next year.

If your strips are not held firmly to the stations I guess you’ll just have to break out the planes.

All the best,
Rob