: Thank you this is exactly the response I was hoping for. How did
: you find the ends with quarter inch strips? I heard it is kinda
: rough. what kind of scarfing did you do? I have read butt joints
: are good enough and fastest just a matter of opinion I guess.
: Any pics? I would love to see some.

Hi Dave

I found the ends pretty hard, especially the bow. I chose not to use cheater strips because I like how it looks without them, but it certainly would have meant that the strips had less bending to do. But in the end it was ok. Also I could have used strips that were 5/8" wide for that part of the stripping process. They would have bent more easily. e.g. my sheerline strip I trimmed to 5/8" which made it a LOT easier to bend to the sheerline, compared to using a 3/4" strip.

I do wish though that I had used an internal stem. It would have been very helpful to have something solid to glue the strips to. I think it would also have helped if I had use 3/16" thickness strips not 1/4". But given that it is my first I liked the security of having 1/4". A few of my strips the bead wavered off centre by a fraction of a millimetre, meaning that the strips don't line up perfectly. So I'll be planing off a little bit of the proud strips to make them all level. Knowing they are 1/4" thick makes me less worried about trimming off half a millimetre to make the strips even. Like the book I can't stress the importance of getting that bead and cove right!

I've detailed it all on my blog which is here: http://ianjohnsonz.wordpress.com/ (I don't know how to make this a clickable link sorry so you'll have to copy it into your browser address!)

Joints - I'm with George I like scarf joints. But I got fed up with doing these and resorted to doing a butt joint (at a slight angle) and using clamps to keep it fair. Which meant one strip per night but hey. My boat won't be lovely uniform strip colour (watch Nick's recent videos - he's book matching one which will look amazing), but it will get built in a reasonable timeframe. (Well, 13 months and still not finished the deck)