I'm very familiar with that contradiction and it's compounded by the "you don't know what you don't know" syndrome. Case in point how many times have you uttered the words "well damn it seemed like a good idea at the time."

Strip built 16.6' kayak, stapleless using that hot glue gun tacking method...I'm sourcing my lumber from a couple different places locally but ultimately a mix of western red and lighter cedar.

Here's a sampling of some of the stuff I've decided without having any practical way of knowing which way is better.

bead/cove vs hand bevel: bead cove because I have a router and want to use it
16.6 vs 17.6': 16.6 because that's all the room I have to work with
western red cedar vs gold: both because I can :D
roll vs scrape: scrape, because in in my head it would seem that that prevents you from overloading the epoxy but what the hell do I know
this epoxy vs that epoxy: 5 gallons of whatever Rob tells me to buy, because his boats are still floating and that's good enough for me
staple vs stapleless: neither - hot glue!!! because...well damn that seems like a good idea, and I need to buy back time where ever I can

One immediate benefit of starting this project is that my basement is now clean, and in violation of Rob Mack's rules, I had to stop to fix one of the 3 problems that cropped up as a result of one of my solutions (I needed more shelf space to clear space to work, so spent the weekend building out 24 ft of shelf space).

As problems go - that's a good one to have I think.