: Lucky me I got a set of plans to build a Guillemot for christmas
: and am starting to get organized. Question is how much wood? I
: am thinking of going with 3/4 bead and cove 1/4 thick. If the
: blade takes 1/8 then each strip is like 3/8, so Nicks book says
: 53 strips at 18' is 20% over, that would mean 19.875" at
: 18' of wood yes? From people who have built this boat how many
: strips are actually needed and opinions on strip thickness and
: width for this boat would be great. Thanks
I've almost finished stripping my first, also a Guillemot. I have *just* enough strips. I started with two planks of the following dimensions:
1 x 4.2m long x 50mm thick x 200mm wide (about 14' x 2" x 8") chocolate colour
1 x 3.4m long x 50mm thick x 150mm wide (about 11' x 2" x 6") blonde colour

I was planning to use a 1.6mm (1/16") kerf blade, but then a friend offered a professional table saw with 3mm kerf. So I carefully calculated whether I would have enough! Was a bit worried but has just been ok.

Each plank was bandsawn into two planks, each about 21mm thick after dressing. Each of those was then ripped into 1/4" strips. From memory I got 20-21 strips from each of the 200mm planks, and I think 14 from the 150mm planks. So all up a total of 41 x 14' + 28 x 11' = 574 + 308 = 882' of strips. Less than I would have liked but as it turned out just enough.

Some things to keep in mind:
* Allow some (lost) space to create a straight edge on the plank. e.g. I got 21 strips from one of the 8" planks, and 20 from the other. 21 x 3/8" = 7.875" so I was pretty happy with that. I only got 20 from the other due to a wonky edge (a mistake). (In fact each plank was slightly less than 3/8" since the kerf was 3mm which is a little less than 1/8")
* Allow for some screwy strips. It's frighteningly easy to let the plank drift while cutting a strip, and then you have wasted most of that strip AND the next one (since you'll have to create a new straight edge). My mate is pretty experienced at ripping timber and we only lost one this way.
* Likewise cutting the bead and cove. I set this up pretty carefully and fortunately didn't screw up many strips.
* You don't need 18' strips. I found the mixture of 14' and 11' strips quite workable, and it's nice having two distinct tones of wood.

The link is to my post about milling the strips: http://ianjohnsonz.wordpress.com/2009/04/14/milling-the-strips/

Cheers, Ian