Russ, thans for your great input. A few thoughts:

: Still I'll weigh in here: First my suggestion is Eric, kick the blower unless
: you have too have one. I am back on room air again, kicked the pipe. That
: was just a work around not good practice.
It allowed me to be in the shop
: when other wise I couldn't be there. Yeah I am still doing a few hits of
: albuterol to stay in the shop, but... Room air and shop air, and outdoors
: is part of what is wonderful in this hobby. take it from someone who
: has been there and back.
: Yeah wearing a cartridge filter mask using dust systems and body isolation
: practices, gloves and tyvec etc in certian situations makes sense. But
: don't take the senses out of boat building.

All right, I kicked the vac, but does this mean you're not even wearing a mask while working all day?
You're going to make our friend the owl raise an eyebrow...
I'm your man for the smell of wood! But the smell is one thing, and filling your lungs with sawdust is another, far less commendable. Beware your lungs are now part of the national heritage!! at least for this board!

: Having said that it takes the same amount of time to build a beautiful boat
: as it does an ugly boat. I have also discovered for my sellf what others
: have told me before. I takes the same amount of time to build a stitch and
: glue as it does a stripper.....Jig and all.

Mmmh...It's no doubt true for somebody with your experience in stitching.
Well, you know more than I do!

: I am building a hybrid now, just to see what it was all about. To my mind it
: was all the headache with out any of the creativity. Yeah was able to get
: those hard radius chines, but I was able to pad extra strips in on a
: stripper and sand the same thing in last year. So it was wash. S/G has its
: place and many folks enjoy the process. SO I'm not bashing the method.

I'm ready to admit this. Only someone recently declared on the board that building a stripped deck on a stitch'n'glue was a p-i-t-a. I believed that was true. I won't give his name. So with that wondaful smell of tar...

: What I am trying to say is if you want to look of strip then a gentle
: suggestion would be strip away. Its the same time invested. If your
: thinking the look your already thinking creativly. But I think your under
: the illusion that their is a short cut to it. I have been teaching boat
: building to the interested few on and off for years. Lots of folks just
: want the boat fast. Good enough. Some want a beautiful boat fast.... and
: try every short cut. Sad it takes the same time and they cut them selves
: out of the creative. The first lesson seems to be to get folks to slow
: down and that only happens when they start enjoying the process.

That's righteous philosophy, basically.
Only when I'm not missing building space, I miss building time: I live in a large city, and I make sawdust in my bathroom. No room for a stripper!
So am I building a folding boat; chances are she'll look like a bathtub.
On holiday, there's more space at the marina, but then weird ideas come through my mind: like sitting in the work of art and paddle or sail away!
There are people!
That means reduced building time, unfortunately...
Hence the idea to make an improved s&g with strips...

: Several years ago there was a post series in which we talked about weather we
: talked to our boats. The history of kayak building is grounded in the
: Inuit tradition.
That's to say the skin-on-frame tradish, isn't it? Those flexible foldings aren't too bad boats at sea either! There's room for different boats, for different ways, as I'm sure you know.

: A bit of personal truth. Did ya notice that recently there wasn't much
: creativity in my posts. It was like something broke.
Uh, apparently that has cured since, what?

: Eric, my suggestions would be give into your creativity. It wants to build
: something beautiful. Give your creativiity the time to make the dream a
: reality.
Be assured, o Master, I'm working hard at this! I'm indeed on a folding sailboat, a hybrid (argh! again!) of two different designs, one from Poland, another from East Germany, that haven't been produced since 1975; this means I work with no plans, only sly and small internet pics. Six months' itch!
The first cuts are a deliverance, Russ! I have got a stem and a transom! That's a start, uh?
I want to go to some islands that are too far away for me yet to paddle to...let alone safety regulations.

: If you do that I am guesing you'll find you have the time and enjoy the time
: to build what your creative mind is seeing.

: Eric, Jig building is part of the fun. Lining out a boat is dreamscaping. Its
: where you start to see, what is happening. If its a miserable process,
: something is wrong with how your doing it. I have seen this before too.
: People wantthe boat , but don't really want the boat building, because its
: mind numbing repetitious stuff. Rather then treat the symptoms they give
: into the horor of boredom.
Last summer, after one week of calculations converting inches into metrics I built a folding yak on antibiotics with my right finger swollen by a palm-tree branch's pointed end, that stuff is poisoned, go figure that?!

: I invite people in we get 3 or 4 boat builders going and we work together.
: We have open houses in the shop. People stop by. At other times when its
: just me and the boat, its bluegrass, sassfrasc tea and an owl stopping
: bye. If the process isn't enjoyable then make it so. It takes about 250
: hours to build a boat. If they aren't enjoyable why invest in the hobby.

The good life indeed!

: working hte plane to the rythm of pink floyd.......IT becomes really fun.
For me it would be La Callas on Parsifal, or Diana Krall's latest if I could hear anything with the noise of the power tools!

: Eric I have a recommendation. Get yourself a boat building buddy.

My buddies' part is now to take me out, so that I stop messing about in boats for a while!

: I'll close with this. It is a favorite line I haven't quoted in a whileThere
: are many sailors who insist that wooden boats have a soul;
Japanese poets believe things have a soul! Objets inanimés, avez-vous donc une âme? Also, in Greek, poetry means the making of something...

Certianly there are few opportunites in life these days to blend art
: science , and the natural world in so dramtic a fashion
In a nutshell, Russ. Nottun' like it!