> I am ready to put the pattern strips to the deck of a strip-deck
> Tred Avon. Those strips don't want to do what I want them to! How
> to make them bend tighter radii in the "flat"?

A: Steam them. If you don't have a steamer try wrapping the strip with a rap and pour boiling water on it. Let it rest a minute and try to bend it. If that doesn't give you the curves you want, go to plan B.

B: Slice them into narrower strips. Instead of using one 1/4 by 3/4 inch (6mm by 19 mm) strip, use 1/4 by 1/4 (6mm x 6mm) strips. They will be square in cross section and much more bendable in any direction you want them to twist. Use three strips side by side to equal the width of a single 3/4 inch (19mm) wide strip. (The math in metric measurement doesn't add up due to slight rounding errors, but the parts will fit fine.) If the bending is not so severe you could try using 1/4 x 3/8 inch (6 mm x 9 mm) strips. Then you would just need 2 strips to match the width of a regular 3/4 inch (19mm) wide single strip.

For these narrow strips, bead and cove treatment is just a waste of wood in my opinion. I'd use straight edged material.

If you are careful in ripping the stock, and keep pieces together, the seam between the re-assembled pieces will be unnoticeable.

C: Why bend the wood at all? With a bandsaw you can resaw a nominal 1x8 plank into 2 pieces of wood that are 1/4 inch thick and 7.5 inches wide, (plus another piece of thinner scrap). You can cut fancy shapes out of this with a bandsaw or jig saw. Once the design is cut it should be very flexible and easy to apply. If you want wider designs than 7.5 inches, edge glue and piece the material together to get what ever width you want. Same idea if you are working with 1x6 stock, only you'll get a piece that is 5.5 inches wide, and have to do a bit more edge gluing to build up wider panels.

An idea here: If the deck has got gentle bends, make up panels of light and dark wood. Stack them and cut out the design with a very thin saw blade. A scrollsaw would be ideal here. Now restack them so the light wood piece fits into the dark wood piece like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle. (You'll have two pairs of matching pieces. The dark wood will have a left and a right part that interlock. Same for the light wood piece. But the left part of the light wood will interlock with the right side of the dark wood panel, and vice versa.) For a symetrical design, put either the light, or the dark wood panels in the center of the deck (back to back with the straight side running down the center) and the interlocking, contrasting color wood panels on either side. Trim around them with contrasting strips.

Depending on the design and the thickness of the scroll saw, jig saw or band saw blade you may get a slight gap between the panels. Use a little filler in the glue or epoxy.

You can get bizarre with this, too. If you are using epoxy, adding a colorant can give a slight tinge of color to the glue joint. Plain black would simply accent the edge of the design. I know someone on this board would want to use green on the right side and red on the left, and put a halogen light inside the hull so that the glue joints would glow at night, and in the appropriate colors for running lights. The halogen lamp would be powered by the same battery that runs the refrigerator, CD player, solenoids for the hatch releases, and the heated paddle shaft.

Best of luck with this.

Paul Jacobson