Rob, et. al.,

Your posts and your comments are very valuable to a first time builder like myself. I was thinking about posting a compilation of first time builder mistakes that I have made and this one tops the list.

My kayak is not completely stripped yet, but I know that I am having some problems with strips of unequal thickness. I bought my wood over a period of about a month and made my strips shortly after buying each batch of wood stock. I used the same tablesaw, blade, hold-downs and fence set-up each time and measured the thickness of the strips with a gauge.

My strips vary from about 0.22 to say 0.27 inches in thickness. About 1/20 of an inch! But this turned out to be huge in the scheme of things for a strip kayak. This strips are difficult to edge align, be they B/C or cut with a 5 degree bevel (I and using both in different areas of the hull and deck).

As you mentioned, it is very obvious to me that I will have a lot of planing, sanding, fairing work to get a smooth kayak shape. Where I have used B/C, this process results in gaps appearing between the strips that ultimately I will need to fill. Morale of the story, if I had simply waited and cut all of my strips at once, then the difference in thickness would have been much smaller and it would have saved me a lot of time.

Live and learn, try not to repeat the same mistakes.

Greg