As a bozo builder, I have spent too many hrs to count trying, discarding, redoing, passing over and going back (sometimes) - on my yak - one side semi ok the other soso. THe result will be quite a mishmash(design, process, building etc etc) but the process has been one happily followed as I have other yaks to play around with during this quite enjoyable process. That is the salvation. A yak is a means to get out on the water. That's the important thing. All this other stuff we do here is other fun. I have one yak that I happily use that is undoubtedly the ugliest, stupidest most ridiculous yak in the world. It's great. I get out.

You mention the ext strongback as the only way to loosen the forms when building stapleless. I believe from a prior post, that Rob bangs the forms free by hammering/levering against a thin pc of metal sliding between the unglued strips at the sheer after all is glued up. This means that one half (the deck typically) of the building process is performed w/ the yak unsu pported. Usage of an internal strongback can be by using the face wedge method, stripping the deck to the last central say 2 or three strips, and then just driving out the pins w/ a hammer and long (like 8in or so- prob way less like 4in) pc of rod. The pins only have to be driven 1/2in or so and flick them sideways. The forms are now free to move and you can loosen them. It might even make sense to fair most of the yak except the last 2 strips as it is still a rigid assembly, and then do touchup on the last 2 after the pins are driven(forms not yet loosened). Conjecture only, but don't see why not. Its still going to be a more rigid process as even the loosened forms only move SIDEWAYS the slop you put in the hole(like say 1/4in). They'll only move lenghtways after the third last strip is freed. I believe it would be a superior process and obviously alignment can retained for longer.

-mick