: The deck will get stripped, but I haven't decided if there's enough reason
: for bead/cove or if I'll try planing the strips. I would like to use
: 3/16" strips, but have not decided on species or design. Also the
: shape of the deck really had me thinking. I first thought that I would
: hold the sheer line and just use the same radii as my Chesapeake (16"
: and 22"), but when I tried that, it created an extremely low volume
: yak. I settled on something similar to Vaclav's design, but rounded each
: angle point out and that should yield a very close match to the true
: design. My model however, has the Chesapeake style deck. We'll see...
: SMF

If you are going for a simple curve then beveled srips work great and are simpler and faster to make.

Without doing any math you could cut a one or two degree bevel on each edge. When those strips were installed the edges would meet a bit better than strips with right angle edges. To do this better, though, figure out the diameter ( that's twice the radius) of the arc that your deck will make, and multiply by pi ( or 3.1417 is close enough) to get the circumference. Divide the circumference by the width of your strips to how many strips it would take to make a complete circle. Divide 180 by the number of strips and the answer is the angle you have to remove from each edge.

Now you may ask, "why you're using 180, when there are 360 degrees in a circle"?
Well, each joint between two strips has to share the angular change at that point, so each piece gets half of the angle. Sure, you could divide your number of strips into 360 to get the angle at each strip joint, and then divide that by 2 -- but you get the same answer by just dividing the number of strips into 180 in the first place.

Measure the actual circumference of your deck and divide that by the width of your strips to give you a number of how many strips you'll need.

These bevels are so small that very little stock is removed, so they are fst and simple to cut. I think my preferred tool would be a jointer/planer, but you can cut the beveled edges on the strips on a table saw, a disk sander, a belt sander, a router, freehand with a plane (not as accurate), or make an angled jig to mount on your plane, and push the strip past the stationary blade on the plane.

With a little ingenuity you could make a hand-held "plane" about twice the size of a pencil sharpener from a block of wood holding a single-edge razor blade. A 1/4 inch wide slot in the block of wood would allow it to slide along the strip. If the razor blade was mounted at the correct angle it would shave off the slight ribbon of excess stock on one pass.

Hope this helps

PGJ