: I got my cedar cut down into 3/16 thick strips today. I have a
: question though. Most of the time when you by wood advertised as
: 1x whatever, the 1" is usually a bit less than 1". In
: my case it was more, 1 and 1.16" to be exact.

: I realize that I will lose some to milling the B&C on them, but I
: am seriously wondering if I should split the strips I have into
: 1/2" strips prior to milling the B&C. It seems like it
: would be a lot easier to mold the bow and stern. The 1"
: width seems REALLY wide, even with a heat gun. I know it would
: be more work, but I really don't mind.

: Thoughts or suggestions on this?

The cove and bead cut away quite a bit of wood. Typical router bits have a 1/8" radius, which translates to a 1/4 inch diameter on the cutting edge. Assuming a perfect setup where the cutter just kiss the strip, you'll lose 1/8" on milling the strip. With 1/4" thick material that would turn 3/4" strips into 5/8" of exposed wood per strip. with 3/16" thick strip you lose a bit less. Of course the wood is soft and you can set up your router to mill away even more wood if you wish, but doing so at the router table is a waste.

It sounds like you got 5/4 lumber. nothing wrong with that. I did my canoe with wide strips and it worked fine. I didn't bother with bead and cove, I used a plane and did a quick job of fitting each strip as it was applied. I resawed a handful of strips down to half the width (they were somewhere between 3/8" and 1/2" wide) and used those in areas where I had to follow some extreme bends. This was before I heard of using a heat gun,and they all went on easily without even that assistance.

Obviously, if you make narrower strips and then bead and cove them they are going to get even narrower before you have a chance to apply them. The good news here is that the narrower they are the easier they bend and twist for those tricky, twisty areas. The bad news is that you will cry over all the sawdust when you remember what you paid for the boards! If you take the lightest or the darkest colored wood and use that for your thinner strips they will appear as pinstripes. If you use your average colored wood for the thin strips they will blend in with the rest of the wood. For greatest flexibility, do some of each and keep the strips together until you use them.

You can run the thin strips the full length of the boat ( best idea if you go with pinstripes) or you can use a wide strip for most of the length of the boat and just use thin strips at the ends for the curves. If you go with this idea, try to match color so the joint where the single wide strip ends and the two thinner strips begin will not be noticeable. You will also need to make that "wide" strip a little bit thinner than the rest of the wide strips. Why? Well, it will need to match the width of the two thinner strips, and those are roughly half of a wide strip, after the sawblade kerf. So, with a saw with a thin kerf (let's say the kerf is .090") if you start with a strip that is 1 1/16" wide (1.0625"), re-ripping it in half gives you two square-edged strips which are just under 1/2" wide (.485125"). When you bead and cove each of those strips they will lose another 0.1", making the stack of two of them just 0.7725" (this is just doing the math; no way can you expect precision down to ten- thousandths of an inch). To get a wide strip which matches those two thin ones, you'll need to rip off the edge and bring that wide strip down to .8725" before you mill off the 0.10" with your bead and cove work.

OR, you can skip the math, rip your strips thinner, then try to match up the proper width of the thick strip by matching it to the stack of two thin strips. Frequently this method is faster and just as accurate.

Consider when using your thin strips that if you are using pairs of them to match with the width of a thick strip you only need to bead the edge of one thin strip, and cove the edge of the other. The joint between them can be a square edge. They'll flex and fit fine this way, and you won't lose as much wood. Any slight misalignment is removed when sanding.

The majority of the deck will take the widest strips. Run them straight, starting in the center of the deck, and let the ends overhang. Once the glue is hard trim back the ends and use thin strips to define the edge, and go around the compound curvature. The first strip you apply along the gunwale, or down the keel line, can be a wide strip, and you can let it run straight. There is no need to bend it to follow the curvature at the tips of the boat. You can use 3' to 4' long, tapered strips to fill in those areas, and many of those tapered strips can be wide ones.

Hope this helps.

PGJ