Folks,

I think someone forgot to mention that BEFORE putting a bead and cove on strips you should be sure that they are all the same thickness.

Even the best ripping operation will lead to some variance in the thickness of the strips.

The fix to this is to use a surface planer to smooth and dimension all your strips before you run them through the bead and cove milling process. The problem to this is that a surface planer is far more expensive than a router.

Thin and thick strips do not center themselves when you run them through your routers. It can be frustrating to work with strips which are slightly different.

As I see it, it is back to the equation of time versus money. If you want to save some time, you spend to buy strips which are precut and have bed and cove edges. If you want to use these strips and save some money, you buy the bits and make them--but you need to make a lot of them before you recoup your investment if you do not already have a router and table. The cheapest route is still to go with square-edged strips and bevel them with an inexpensive handplane. You may spend a little more time, or not.

Either way, you will end up with a boat. You smooth it and fair it the same.

Either way, most of the strength comes from the glass applied to the surface of the strips.

PGJ