: Just starting my Petrel, the form is ready for the sheer strips, so
: I have some time to figure this out.

: The recess, nick shows it out of plywood, and says he built his out
: of veneer and glass, and I have seen a couple on the web built
: out of strips. My question is how did you (as in anyone who has
: built a petrel) build the recess? I have some Peruvian walnut
: strips I would like to use however this looks a lot more
: complicated than ply wood.

Cut the opening, then run strips across the opening working back from the aft end of the cutout. The recess lies on a plane, so it's pretty easy to shape the ends to fit the cutout, edge glue the strips with wood glue and hot glue them in polace at either end. One can use a couple of strips of masking tape to tighten the edge-to-edge seam while the glue dries, just as one wood while stripping.

As you noted, the last few strips at the stern extend beneath the level of the deck cutout. I hot glued a couple of strips longitudinally along the strips that were already in place to provide a platform, then edge-glued the last few strips in place on top of them. This will extend beyond the curve of the stern edge of the cutout, but will be trimmed later.

This leaves a crescent shaped opening at the stern end of the recess to fill in (this is what Nick is filling in with veneer). I used strips, shaping them to fit the opening, then used hot glue to set them in place (with wood glue along the edges, which were beveled to make the curve (just as one would the coaming riser).

At this point, it's easy to trim the excess from the flat section from the bottom and glass the recess in place before making a cutout for the coaming riser.