I'm finally starting to make some progress on my strip kayak, and have this past weekend mounted the forms on my strongback. Exciting to see the shape realised at full scale. It looks a LOT sleeker than the plastic boat next to it.

While I was sanding the forms to shape, it occurred to me that hand sanding with a block was very slow and painful, belt-sanding was quick, but not that accurate, so I made a "sanding blade" for my table saw.

One blade sized piece of hardboard, 100grit paper glued to one side, and 150grit on the other. I had to bore 2mm out of one side of the "blade" to achieve double sided sanding with almost zero clearance in the blade slot.

Now I can sand perpendicular to the forms very accurately using the saw table. I can see this coming in very handy later on when fitting strips and scarfing.

I'm working on a jig to rip my strips too, but wondered if there are any more useful/indispensable things other lateral thinking builders have come up with that I should be thinking about at this stage?