Greg,
Thanks, I used the strongback shown in Rob's plans. What your're seeing down the middle is black paint highlighting the white centerline. I'm using parallel 3/16" x 3/4" cove & bead and plain straight edge from Classic Boats. What I did is start out with non cove and bead the first few strips and then changed to cove & bead until I ended the darker cedar with a straight edge. This allows me to fit the White cedar bottom strips without having to make a bead on the bottom edge. I'm finding less gaps and fitting easier so far with this method. The wood I used in the Bow pieces is Padauk for the Shooting Star and Mahagony in the North Star. I'm also going to use Padauk for the cockpit coamings of her Shooting Star.
My North Star came in at 45#s including the float bags inside the front and rear.
Yeah,I here you, this thing about getting old is not good. They're telling me it's Osteoarthosis (sp?)in my right shoulder and that doesn't fair well with building the kayak or paddling, so I hope they can do something for it. Meds only take the edge off. Good luck with your project. Hope you get started soon.
Steve