: I've noticed on the hulls of canoes and kayaks that there are occassionally
: dips or low spots that correspond with where strips are stapled to the
: forms. It seems more common on canoes with large flat areas, like the
: bottom of the boat.

: Has anyone else experienced this?

Oh, yeah!

: What causes it?

I always thought it was "beginner's luck" Everything causes this: Bad form design, bad form placement, poor thickness control when ripping or planing the strips, stapling the strips to the forms, not stapling the strips to the forms. etc. Using bead and cove strips should help, but sometimes the combination of interlocking of the bead and cove and the twist given a strip in one area can cause the adjoining strip to ride high, or dip low.

: Any preventative remedies?

Crrect these errors as soon as you detect them. It is painfull to pull out a few strips when you notice one is dipping low, but better to fix it sooner than to wait until later. Any you completely mix will show up when you fair the boat, Some can be roved with a lot of sanding, but others you might want to saw out and patch, or fill in with a very thin veneer to bring them up to the proper height, and thus fix them so people won't notice them.

Or, you can leave them alone and just go paddle your canoe, knowing that most aluminum canoes have bigger dents in the bottom than the minor dips in your woodstrips.

PGJ