: . . . Friend and
: I were kicking around the possibility of developing some strip kits - or
: just milled wood strips.

You might talk to the people of Vacation Sports from the position of being a prospective supplier to them of strips for their kits! Or, if you are making up kits they might like to add some designs to their inventory. If you can afford the carrying costs and discount, you might even offer some to them on consignment.

: He is into canoes, and I am more of a sailboat
: guy - but have admired kayaks.

You can certainly make a sailboat out of strips

:I have a set of plans drawn up for a strip
: pickup bed cover, and when I started looking at costs for good clear wood,
: it was surprising.

What is surprising to me is that people even look for clear wood when they plan to cut it up into thin strips. A board may have a 3 inch wide knot in it. So what? You can't fit a 3 inch knot into a 1/4 inch strip. Your strip just ends where the knots begins. And what do you have? A shorter clear strip.

When you look at how lumber is graded you find that a board is evaluated for the amount of clear wood that might be cut out of it. But the price is not entirely consistent with this. Sinc we want "clear" strips which are so thin, we can buy far cheaper lumber and simply throw away the waste.

Even better though is to rip out the knots and create longer boards which we can rip. If you look through the millwork section at any lumberyard you'll find many mouldings for baseboards and other common household trims. These are clear, and fairly expensive by the foot, but if you look carefully, you'll see that many of them are fingerjointed, or have butt joints. That long clear wood was assembled from shorter pieces. for strip building you can join you wood with scarf joints for greater strength.

: Thought that if we purchased enough for "our"
: needs, the sell off of our excess milled strips could help pay our way.

Pick up a few copies of Nick's book and give them away to anyone who might buy strips. Once they get addicted you'll have a captive market.

: Around here, I see basswood and aspen strippers, with some color thrown in
: for "fun".

If you are planning on making strips of those species, you might be able to swap some with strip makers who have access to other species. That gives both people a bigger variety to offer to customers, but you only have to actually make the strips with the wood you can obtain locally.

Looks like we will probably
: run our own millwork, with potential sales to those scratch building.

Pleased be aware of the growing concerns about breathing in sawdust. if you want to enjoy a long a healthy retirement, get a good dust collection setup and wear the approprate respirators when doing dusty work.

hope this helps

PGJ