: I'm finishing attaching my forms to the strongback tonight and in
: the morning, and with any luck, will get all the strips cut
: tomorrow afternoon. I'd like to be able to strip all day Friday,
: Sat, and Sunday, after Thanksgiving.

You might want to consider ripping all the strips, but only putting a bead and cove edge on 60% to 70% of them now. That should be enough to get you started. You will need some strips with one or both edges unmilled later on. At that time you can either plane off the bead and cove to go back to a square edge, or you can pick up one of the un-milled strips.

Mill your strips with the rounded-over bead edge first. Then set up for the cove cutting, which leaves two delicate edges. If you leave your router setup with the cove bit installed, you can later rip more cove edges as you need them. Should you need to taper a strip, you can form a bead on the tapered edge with a hand plane and a sanding block.

The biggest problem with milling bead and cove edges is working with strips which do not have uniform thickness. If some of your strips are thinner or thicker than the rest, then you will have problems getting the bead and cove edges on them--so take care when ripping the strips and be sure that your strips are all the same thickness.

Definitely get a few pieces of cheap pine from the local store and cut that into strips of the same thickness as your cedar. You can use these for clamping and alignment. The pine will take more clamp pressure than using cedar from those fence pickets, and it is cheap. Don't worry about it being clear, either. You are just using it for the miscellaneous times when you need a piece of scrap wood.

It will be a bit slower to strip without using staples, as you will need to wait for the glue to dry on the first few strips before you can add more strips. If you try to apply too many at the same time, the liquid glue will act more like a lubricant than an adhesive, and the strips will slide all over the place. I would do 3 strips on one side, then 3 on the other, and take a break for an hour. That is why some people hot glue them to the forms. (Be sure to cover the edges of the forms with masking tape!) If you have short scraps of pine strips, hot glue those to the forms as clamps (or you can staple them to the forms) to hold your cedar in place until the glue sets. Then knock off the short pine strips--hot glue and all--and put on your cedar strips.

Good luck with your project.

PGJ