: Having built 3 Chesapeake stitch & glues, I'm now going to try a strip
: built. I think I've overcome the initial intimidation factor. I really
: like a couple of the Redfish designs, and am tortured by the choices. I
: think I have it down to the Spring Run vs. the Silver. I like the idea of
: the Spring Runs stability, but the volume seems to be more than I would
: like. The Silver has more of the features I want, but am concerned about
: the 22" beam and it's stability (I'm used to a 24" beam).

There's a lot more to initial stability than just the beam. I paddled a Guillemot someone local had built a couple of years ago (21" beam) and thought it was way *too* stable. That was because he hadn't built a seat for it yet so I was sitting on a 1/2" foam pad. Sitting that deep in the boat made it very stable, so much so that I found it difficult to edge it over very far unless I leaned over the side with my shoulder. Even if you do find the 22" beam boat a bit tippy at first, you'll almost certainly get used to it after very little time paddling it.

Also, am I insane to think that I can mill my
: own strips with my table say and router? Is it worth it? Thanks!

I just built one CLC boat (a Northbay) before embarking on a cedar strip project. I decided to mill my own strips. Of course, I bought a new table saw and already had the router and router table. The biggest problem was that I bought a free standing saw (weighs over 200 pounds) and once it was set up in my basement I only had some much space to work with on either side, so even though I was able to find a local source for cedar in up to 20' lengths I only had room to rip boards about 15' long. Moving the saw outside up a set of stairs would have been difficult.

Once the saw was set up, ripping the strips was fairly easy. The router table set up was also fairly easy, and once the router bits were adjusted, putting on the bead and cove was simple, albeit a bit tedious feeding one strip after another through.

I really liked begin able to select my own wood. The colors of red cedar can very quite a bit, so if you have a pattern in mind for how you want to lay out the strips you can buy just the right amount of different colors to do it.