Thank you everyone for the ideas. I have chosen to do something akin to what Ted Henry described, which is mostly doing the background first. That method also has a minimum of fitting the strip ends.

My boat already had had the curved decorative edge strips temporarily attached, so I marked each station, removed the decorative strips, and am starting to work the background.

I appreciate the help.

John

: John,

: I think you can see from the answers that you can do it either way. Filing
: strips around the curves takes longer because each strip has to be fit
: individually. When I did this it helped to cut the curved strip with
: double coves. I found that while fitting the "fill" strips I
: could get tighter and faster joints by rounding off the edges and
: incerting them into a cove than by doing butt joints. The double coves
: allows you to fill on both sides of a curved accent strip.

: Cutting out the curve is faster but requires some time to smooth the curve so
: that the accent strip lies tight to the cut without gaps. Its not real
: difficult to do but somthing to think about.

: Regards

: Jack