: The decorative strip I made out of Spruce/Cedar diamonds seems very tough -
: it was hard to plane. It may be due to the characteristics of the Spruce.

I broke all of my pine strips (for the inner stern stem) while stupidly messing around with a dry bend, and that was the last of the pine. So I looked around for an alternative to making yet another run to the store, and decided to rip a few short strips off a spruce stud. It bent OK, using a boiling water bath instead of steam, but it doesn't plane worth a damn. Bevelling the bow stem, in steamed pine, is like carving butter. The stern stem, though, is awful. It tears rather than slices - using the same plane.

I don't know whether its just the nature of spruce, or the fact that I boiled it, or the fact that its kiln-dried, but its been the biggest pain in the %## so far in this project. Come to think of it, I scarphed up some spruce (the same stud, I think) for the sheer clamps as well, but didn't have any problems with those. Hmmmmm!!!!
Ken