I suppose there are as many ways to do this as there are builders. Some will strip the primary area "wild" and then trim the section to shape with a Japanese pull saw. Fill in pieces then are cut and trimmed to fit. I've heard of others trimming to shape with a router.

I went the other way, and outlined my design with a 1/4 x 1/4 strip that was bent to shape and hot glued to the forms. This meant that EVERY strip in my deck had to be cut and fitted, but allowed me to be stripping in several areas at one time - by the time I finished fitting a strip in the last area, the glue had dried enough to go back and lay another strip in the first area. 'Sides that, the "outline" strip tends to force fair curves, where the "shape after stripping wild" school of thought does not provide that in and of itself. There are a couple pages on my website that show the method I used.

jrs

: Can you tell me the basics of this stripping technique ? Should I start by
: outlining the two light colored quadrants with a single (highly bent)
: strip and then fill-in the quadrants with light alaskan ceder? Or should I
: just strip in straight lines and butt-join the light and darker woods in
: that graceful arc?