: Btw, no one seemed to mention it, so I will. You really don't want the joints
: of the three pieces you show here to line up like that. That alone will
: help alot in keeping from having misalignments like this.

: Bill H.

While I agree with you Bill, the fact is that I took a different route. I sort of decided that I don't have the capabilities to do the really nice work that I've seen here. Or rather, I may have the capabilities but definitely not the patience! In any event, the walnut I have had to be cut into short section because the strips were kind of bent. At first I glued an AYC pinstrip on the canoe and then added the walnut. But gluing the pinstrip was really finicky. So I then decided to glue the pinstrips to the walnut on the bench and then attach the whole thing on the boat at once.

For sure it will look a big goofy but I can live with it. Even if I tried to do it the "right way", I'm pretty certain I would have screwed it up somehow anyways! I truly am an example of Perot's principle: 80% of the work with 20% of the effort. In my case I'm an extreme. I get 80% of the result with 10% of the effort. In order to get things really right, it takes me huge amounts of time.

Further examples of this are small cracks between stips all over the place. I don't know how/why it happens, but it's happening a lot to me. It's not a bevel issue, since the sides of this hull are darn near vertical. It's slight imperfections in the strips. I'm starting to plane/sand the edges prior to gluing so that the strip edges are as flat as possible.

Anyways, your point it taken. If the boat looks too goofy in the end I'm more than ready to paint the exterior white. Being my first stripper, I'm sort of treating it like an experiment (staples, stapless, accents, etc) and in the end I just want a decent canoe.

Thanks for the comments!