: Im not so sure a beginner would take a lot of time to learn the basic tricks,

Making a novice learn to sharpen and use a plane with instructions FROM A BOOK, BEFORE they can finish their stripper, is listed next to waterboarding as torture in the Geneva Convention.

Lets get real here, is this craftsman's hazing or what?

Most people who buy a plane think it's ready to use.

And you think they are going to have fun when the stripper instructions say, "smooth your strips with a plane?

What I'm hearing from the people using planes is that they enjoy using a plane.

Great! No argument from me, I like it too.

But sharpening a plane and learning to use it is a high learning curve to climb before you can build your boat.

What I also hear, not quite as loudly is, "I don't like sanding."

Ted Moores has gone out of his way to say planing is good, sanding is bad.

Why? Because he doesn't understand sanding with a ROS.

And if you listen to that, if you think, sanding is bad you will make it so.

When I started to use a sander I pushed hard on the spots I wanted to remove and kinda passed over the rest a couple times and called it good. Only it sucked because I had low spots and flat spots. You learn fast if you press and edge of the sander on the spot you want to remove it will cut faster with 80 grit. If you have a belt sander you can wipe the smile off the Statue of Liberty with 120 grit. Most people love belt sanders because the heavy weight and high power is very aggressive.

The problem is instead of removing spots you must use the ROS to create a uniform level surface.

You create a uniform level surface by using the full ROS sanding disk to take the whole area down at once. And, you are not going to do this a with 80 grit or above.

A course grit will level the whole surface at once and quickly.

This is where you need guidance on when to stop and move on. This is why understanding that the center of each strip represents a perfect fair surface is your reference mark to tell you when you have reached your goal.

I also understand that people don't care for sanding because it is noisey and dusty. Yes, if you don't wear ear protectors and a dust mask and use a vac to remove dust from your tool it will be so.

And many don't want to wear this stuff. That's fine if that's your choice. There are people who don't like to wear PFDs and drysuits too so they only paddle is fair weather, that's a choice too.

But there is no way around the fact the building a stripper involves a lot of sanding. After you plane the surface you do what? Sand. So if you didn't know how to use the ROS to keep from making flat spots before you planed how are you going to keep from doing it after you plane?

If you have high spots to take down you have stripping problems that need to be fixed before sanding or planing. How do you have high spots and an irregular surface if you're using bead and cove strips?

All the books I've seen on stripping assume you're going to have problems stripping. You'll have gaps to fill and high spots to take down.

Make stripping your #1 job and the result will be fair with little work to level.

If you can't align your strip edges then you need to ask why.

I think you can strip it right from the beginning and reduce you work on every following step.

Rob Macks
Laughing Loon Custom Canoes & Kayaks

If you shoot for the stars and hit the moon, it's OK. But you've got to shoot for something. A lot of people don't even shoot.
Confucius