: Wow, you are tenacious! "every couple of weeks".

: Are the strips you're using northern white cedar?

: Water alone does nothing. Don't confuse wet "green"
: wood's bending properties with dried wood.

: Water is a vehicle for heat transfer. Heat is what facilitates
: bending.
: People constantly confuse water alone, as a bending method.
: It's like focusing on the finger pointing at the moon. It's about
: the moon, not the finger.

: NWC is the most flexible wood for stripping so your applied
: pressure is what worked.

: These kinds of problems are why I use 3/16" thick strips (much
: more flexible) a heat gun (bend it fast,
: right where you need it, and glue it immediately) and hot glue
: (holds better than anything).

: If you can clamp or hot glue a board spanning the area that needs
: to be pushed in, then you can use a wedge
: to push the hull surface in. Once you have this set-up to go, apply
: hot glue to your station and push the wedge home.

: After a few minutes remove the wedge. If that's not enough to hold
: it, clean out the hot glue and hot glue a block to the inside
: hull surface next to the station. Now wedge, hot glue to station as
: before, but now screw through the station into the block.

: Successful stripping is all about creative clamping, but 3/16"
: strips, a heat gun, and hot glue make it MUCH!!! easier.

: I hate to see people struggle, it just doesn't have to be that
: hard.

: For more tricks and tips see:
: http://www.laughingloon.com/shop.tips.html

: Rob

I went back and looked at the pics and noticed you did not have any cheater strips. Cheater strips will ease the bend to the internal stem. On the Guillemot L, I used one cheater strip on the stern and three on the bow. Also, I used 2in by 2in plywood "U" clamps as outlined in Nick Schades video. I cut about 50 clamps and then shaped them to the clamping situation. This include arcing the inside of the clamp or trimming the width to fit in those tight areas. Check out my blog for some of details, and go to the Blog archive for September and you see some of the plywood clamps in action. On the most difficult to bent strips, I dry fitted with clamps, heat gun, or whatever I good find, and let it set overnight before gluing. A little clamp time will do wonders for those pesky strips. I only used staples on the sheerline and the decorative strips.

http://guillemotlkayakbuild.blogspot.com/2011_09_01_archive.html