: Rob - I have no quarrel with your description. Your posts are very detailed
: and always useful (I have cut and pasted a few of your posts into my
: "methods" binder. I hope you don't mind.)

I don't mind at all. I think it's very useful to do this for yourself because the
sheer volume of ideas exchanged here is vast and if you like some post even if
you don't have an immediate use for it or don’t totally understand it, storing it for future
review is a good idea.

I store all the posts I answer on this BB. I know my writing skills are my weakest
skills. I consciously work to answer questions here to work on my writing skills and
to gather data on questions you all have on building methods so I can address these in
updates to my instruction book.

: Quite so, for me. Thus the need to use planes and scrapers to tame the steps
: and unevenness between strips. I hope to do better on my second stripper,
: and the results you describe are an ideal to strive for.

: Do you use B&C strips? Does this razor slash method work OK with B&C joints?

Yes you can just ignore the fact that you have bead and cove edged strips and cut
on the visible joint line to re-align rouge strips.

: One item you left unsaid, perhaps because its so obvious, is that the
: beads & coves must be absolutely dead center on the edge of the strips
: in order to get proper alignment. Unfortunately, it didn't seem that
: obvious to me when I was setting up. I figured that "close
: enough" was close enough. Turned out it wasn't. Oh well, I won't make
: that mistake twice.

You’re right. If you don’t get them just right, dead center, you’ll have gaps show up and you can have a big ugly glue line.

After all the years of experience I have of building I sill have impetuous days when I don’t have the patience to fiddle with something until it’s “perfect”.

This is what has happened to me with getting Bead & Cove cutters aligned perfectly.
The nature of the cove is that it hides the joint. So if you don’t center your cutters you may have a joint that looks good but will show a gap after sanding.

B&C is not fool proof by any means. I always jiggle my B&C strips from side to side to make certain they are fully seated on the previous strip. I usually
apply my B&C strips with the cove up to act as a trough to put glue in. This means the fragile cove edges can be crushed if care is not taken. I cut scrap 3/16" X 3/16' short bits which I place in the cove and press the inside of my spring clamp jaws against to apply downward pressure to seat the strip without damaging the cove. I use 1/4' C&B cutters to mill the C&B on my 3/16' thick strips. This means the cove is less fragil than the cove on 1/4' strips.

This is why I only use bead & cove below the waterline on my boats. This is where there is the most curve to the surfaces and where B&C works best. ON MY DESIGNS the sides and decks do not have as much curve as bottom sections so I use flat edges strips and usually make a slight bevel on one edge of each strip to make the joint tight and allow the strips to follow the arc of the surface.

I now take the time to set-up my router cutters dead-on but I still only use B&C below the waterline on my boats, since it is easier to add pin stripes without B&C on the edges, when I see a joint is tight, I know it will remain tight after sanding, and I save time because I don’t have to run these strips through the cutters.

Some designs like some of Nick’s kayaks have a more continuous curve from chine to deck center and may be harder/more work to strip without B&C.

All the best,
Rob Macks
Laughing Loon CC&K
www.laughingloon.com