John

I too started with a stitch and glue boat and got hooked on this activity. I've built one S&G, two SOF's, two wood strips and currently have a SOF and a strip boat in production. I slowly built up by workshop, and have always milled and shape my own strips and everything else. I get a lot more satisfaction in the finished product knowing I did it from scratch. Over the years, I've carefully added to my tool collection, waiting till I could buy a quality tool which would produce good results and last. I live in eastern Canada, so shipping costs for all materials is a concern for me too.

I have the benefit of having worked with my hands my whole working life, and although I now fly a desk, I'm handy. I'd recommend moving toward getting away from kits and spend the money saved on quality tools. I don't know where you live, but I've found that if you use locally available materials, Eastern white cedar or good pine in place of red cedar in my case, and work hard on finding lumber suppliers, you can have good results with local materials. I found a farmer with a stash of clear, rough cut 1" by 12" by 12 foot pine and bought a bunch of that to turn into strips. I found a small lumber shop who will order in EWC for me at a good price. Takes a lot of leg work, but it lets you build lots of boats.

Kirk