Someone recently asked a really important question;

"Whether you are hand beveling the strip edges or B/C them there is no reason to start the process with strips all identical in width. And, you will hand plane, rough sand, finish sand the inside and outside of the wood so - what's the point of starting with strips identical in thickness?"

The difference is night and day!

Here are the keys to the kingdom.

Having strips of equal thickness is HUGELY important. It allows you to easily align strip edges. If you can align strip edges,
AND your strips remain in contact with your forms, the hull surface IS PERFECT!!!!

IT IS PERFECT

This is the genius of strip building.

You will have very little sanding, scraping and fairing to do.

If you start with the assumption you won't be able to align strip edges, that you can sand, plane and fair your way to a perfect hull, you
will pile hours and hours of work on your project.

How could you know? You can't if everybody else does it that way, if it is assumed you will do it too.

After stripping many, many boats, I've learned exactly how much time is saved by paying attention to aligning strip edges.

It's like the foundation of a house. If it starts out crooked or weak, every other line in each floor and wall will be off and will be hard to correct.

If your strips are of different thicknesses they will create a rough surface that must be leveled with plane or sander and this will destroy
and defeat the beauty, the simple genius, of the strips naturally creating a perfect fair surface.

If the strips are of different thicknesses they won't lay against the forms correctly, and leveling the interior and exterior surfaces will throw
you further and further AWAY from a fair surface.

Bead and Cove profiles must be centered perfectly or they will create more problems than they solve. Setting up B&C cutters is one of the
fussiest jobs you can do with a router. I worked for years with routers and I didn't get it right the first time I milled B&C strips.

Did I throw out those strips? Of course not. I used them and UNKNOWINGLY suffered many extra hour of work compensating for my mistake.

I bet 90% or more of first time builders do the same. That's way I advocate beveling one edge of all your strips at 3˚ on the table saw and hand
beveling as needed to complete your hull.

Aligning your strip edges is JOB ONE.

Do that, focus your time and energy on that, and you will be stunned at how beautifully perfect and fair you hull is from the start!

This means, slow down, dry fit and clamp each strip in place BEFORE you apply glue. To align strip edges you must figure out how
to twist and bend them (with a heat gun) and how to clamp and hold them in place, which means creative use of different kinds of clamps,
hot glue (think of it as a clamp), tape, staples nails, or whatever to get the job done.

If you can't get a strip edge to align you need to be asking questions here about, how do I hold a strip here when my spring clamp won't reach,
or some such question.

Applying the wood strips is the best part. Take your time now, align strips edges, and the rest of your work will be fun too!

All the best,
Rob