: I am doing the research for building my first project.

I like that "first project" line. It reflects an understanding that you will soon be hooked on building more of these types of boats.

: I am searching for
: cove and bead bit sets. I have found Grizzly and MLCS. Does anyone else
: know any other manufacturers? I found a Craftsman set on the internet, but
: there isn't any picture and I think it is a single bit set, which would
: only make half the bead on the first pass. I don't want to think about
: making 360+ passes to form the coves and beads.

That is a lot of passes. Are you cutting strips for 5 boats at once? Or are you using short strips? Whatever the case, each strip needs at least two passes. If you cut only half the bead on a pass then you'll have 50% more passes. For hundreds of strips this could be a production bottleneck, but if you are jsut doing 75 strips and want to save money on the routerbit, it means 3 hours of work instead of two. If the time is available, but the money is not, then you might chose this method.

: Has anyone ever used a
: cabinet shop to have them mill the strips? What did they charge? Thanks in
: advance!

When you get right down to it, anyone (and everyone) who has purchased premade strips has essentially done this. It was a sawmill, or a millwright who made the strips. You can get up-to-date prices from several places that supply precut strips by checking their websites. Anything I quoted now would be obsolete shortly, but a ballpark range would be 25 cents to 45 cents a foot for each strip. That's $2.50 to $4.50 for a 10 foot strip.

A question for you: Why are you using bead and cove strips? They work fine, but there are other methods. You can use a plane, or even a sanding block, and bevel the edges of your strips instead.

Just some thoughts

PGJ