I bought nicks book on 6-19-03 without ever before having a thought about building a kayak. and today i have all the forms on the strongback. ready to strip.

i am building a guillemot, and it looks really cool just as forms. Ive been doing it on the cheap. My forms were made from depot bargin bin material for 5$.

the boat stands, sprayglue (for the paper forms) and strongback were 16$ total.

10x10 grid graph paper was printed from "painter" it has a handy graph funtion built in. i taped multiple 8x10 sheets to get bigger paper. and used brown paperbags from the grocery store for the glueing duplicates.

router bits came from MLCS at 40$ including shipping. so i am into this for about 61$ so far.

I have ripped a 1x4 cedar board down for practice before starting, and am ready to do it for real.

... but while at lowes i found a wood called "aspen" and it is pristeen white. not just white pine but really white like paint with no grain or growth rings.

My question is has anybody ever used it?

and will it stay white under glass and varnish?

thanks
c