: . . . 2) My wife says I have way too many canoes. And don't build more! But I've got all this cedar...

: And I've found that edge-glued strip bookcases merely varnished on both sides
: often get huge and catastrophic stress cracks when placed in a cabin with
: wildly fluctuating relative hunidities.

Seal with epoxy resin, no glass cloth needed, and the humidity problem is gone.
Half-lap edges on the strips give a lot more glue surface area, too. But the ribs sound good, too.

: So I don't glue the strips, but
: instead attach them with copper canoe tacks to steamed cedar ribs from my
: metal-clad wood/canvas mold that has identical lines to the cedarstrip
: mold. So I guess I'm combining wood/canvas and cedarstrip techniques.

That brings us back to the bead and cove issue. You are looking for a shallower bead and cove with a larger diameter. Isn't that going to show gaps even more than the deeper bead and cove joint from a small diameter cutter?

By the way. Any chance of you posting a picture of that canoe mold? Are there recesses in it for the ribs to sit in? How far apart do you space the ribs?

Oh, and why not build book shelves from rowboats? With a flatter bottom and a wider beam you'ld get more books on those.

PGJ