Yeah, I understand the procedure and it's on my long list of things to try. The concerns I have with it are the following:

It seems to me that the strips, when bent, will want to split along those cuts because you've introduced stress concentrations. Remember, I'm not trying to bend a tough strip as you would at the shear line where this method should work great. I have to bend the strip perpendicular to the strips surface. Also these strips have to twist as well as bend.

How the heck do you get glue in the cuts?

I would have to cut the strips in two areas about a foot apart ... there are 2 bends. I will need to do this to as many as 8 strips on each side of the cockpit ... all those localized and closely glue lines aren't going to look so good.

Lastly I think, in my case, you really haven't changed the strength of the material that much. It's like trying to bend 2 equal sized steel plates, one without holes and one with. Both are still going to be pretty strong. In stress analysis terms, you have to change the moment of inertia about the neutral axis of the material. For a rectangle orientad as a strip would be, changing the thickness has far more impact on the strength tha changing the width.

Still ... it might work ... it's not a given that these concerns would be proven out, it really depends on my wood ... I'd just have to try it and see if I can pull it off.

Thanks!

Ken

: As I understood John, he suggests that you
: use a utility knife to "slice" the AREA of the strip you want to
: make bend into several strips. Meaning pick the approximate one foot area
: and slowly use the knife to make 3 or 4 "rips" out of the one
: strip. It is still one solid strip on both sides of the AREA. And the AREA
: is then consisting of 4 or 5 thin (width) strips in the AREA you want to
: bend. All the rest of the strip is intact. I think John is saying that
: after you have made the AREA cut into thinner width strips
: "they" will bend
: (you will then have 4 less than 1/4" wide strips in the AREA of the
: bend). Once "they" are in postion you can glue the separate
: "rips" in the AREA (only) back in to the original one strip.
: Hope you understand the method better, maybe John could clear it up better
: than I just tried to.

: Joe